North Korea Is Switching To a New Time Zone 236
jones_supa writes: North Korea has announced that it is winding its clocks back by half a hour to create a new "Pyongyang Time" — breaking from a time standard imposed by what it called "wicked Japanese imperialists" more than a century ago. The change will put the standard time in North Korea at UTC +8:30. North Korea said that the time change, approved on Wednesday by its rubber-stamp parliament and officially announced on Friday, would come into effect from August 15, which this year marks the 70th anniversary of the Korean peninsula's liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule.
not the only coutry (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:not the only coutry (Score:5, Informative)
Spain is in the "wrong" time-zone as well due to Franco's decision during WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Does not really matter how when and why.
Fact is, geographically France is in the wrong time zone, however the parent is right. There is nothing better than sitting outside on the streets at 22:30 and enjoying the colours of a sunset in its final stage, in summer ofc. I also like it nit to be waken in the morning at 7:00 by glaring sunlight.
If I was the Kaiser of Germany, I would put us also an additional hour more 'west' :)
Regarding our parent, I doubt Macedonia is in CE(S)T. Greece definitely is not. Excep
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Macedonia is in CET, as well as everything north of it (Serbia, Hungary, Poland...). Both Serbia and Macedonia still keep CET as part of Yugoslavian legacy, though geographically, IMHO, it would make sense to shift a timezone in their time zone, since we are on the far east of our timezone. We get very early sunrise and if you work 8-5 or 9-6,
Re:not the only coutry (Score:4, Informative)
It happens more than you think. Florida should geographically be in the Central Time Zone.
Have you looked at a map of the U.S. lately??? There is NO way that Florida should be on Central Time. Perhaps the western-most part of the FL Panhandle; but not the majority of the "sock" part of the state, nor even most of the Panhandle. But in the U.S., the Department of Transportation pretty-much insists that ALL of a State must be on the same time zone, and for FL, that would logically dictate Eastern Time.
Now, if you want to see a Time-Zone embattled State, look no farther than my home-state of Indiana. It STILL has some counties that are on Central Time, even though most of the State is Eastern (which it really shouldn't be, either).
Here's some history [wikipedia.org] on Indiana's Time Zone fun.
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Actually, Florida once was entirely in the Central Time Zone. Here's the map from the Wikipedia article on timezones:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A timezone is nominally 15 degrees of longitude. Boston is Eastern Time at longitude 71 degrees, New York City at 73 degrees. Miami - which is on the part of Florida that sticks out farthest to the East is about 10 degrees west of Boston. Two-thirds of a nominal zone width. But Bangor, Maine at 68 degrees is also Eastern time. as is Tallahassee at 84 degrees.
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So there's definitely some stretching being done
As I said previously, being from Indiana, I certainly know about Timezone "stretching"!
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Haven't noticed Tennessee have you? It's just a few hours drive to CST from me in my EST location.
Well, Tennessee is one of those states (like Florida) that is just too damned big. It's so big they have to repeat THREE of the letters in the state-name to make the name as big as the state!
Thank you very much. I'll be here all week...
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Eh, Kentucky and Tennessee are also split along this line, and the reason for those counties to be on Central Time is because they are closer economically to larger areas on Central Time, and that was their preference.
And that's the same excuse given with the Indiana counties that remain on Central. The ones down by Louisville that wanted to be on-parity with that "economic center", and those up by Chicago, for the same (in that case, understandable) reason.
Re:not the only coutry (Score:5, Insightful)
mystery solved.
Re:not the only coutry (Score:4, Informative)
Re:not the only coutry (Score:5, Informative)
> Base 12 is arbitrary
Not really.
It is chosen because it is divisible by 1,2,3 and 4.
You want also divisible by 5. 60. There are reasons why 12 and 60 have been common for time and measurements. So you can describe fractions of something without fractions (or decimal).
10, on the other hand, is less interesting, except that you can count to ten easily on your fingers. (The reason why it was chosen).
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12 is not chosen because it is dividable (you missed to add: without remainder) by the numbers you picked.
12 is chosen because it is a natural fraction of 60 which is a natural fraction of 360.
The 'time' obviously follows a circle, which has 360 degrees.
Cutting that circle into 12 easy to handle pieces simply makes more sense than to cut it into 10.
Why a circle is _naturaly_ divided into 360 degrees is left as an excercise for the reader.
However, as I'm not a mean guy, I give you a hint.
Imagine to watch a c
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The 'time' obviously follows a circle, which has 360 degrees.
But time is actually of a cubic nature! [timecube.com]
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The UK is not on the same time zone as the UK half the year. Get rid of summer time first, then we can deal with zones.
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what you're saying is totally unrelated to my point. My point is that NK is not the only country in the world that does the "crazy enough" thing of not having the time zone it should have.
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I don't know the history but I always assumed it was to be aligned with trading partners : germany, belgium, luxembourg, italy, netherland and switzerland, ...
There is a lot of communication and traffic between these countries. It makes things easier. One hour difference is no big deal. But having to adjust clock and foresee time difference whenever you travel is annoying and can easily cause confusion.
Re:not the only coutry (Score:5, Informative)
In Napolions times, Germany was divided into half a hundred principals, Dukedoms, and small Kingdoms. Everyone having its own time zone. As the principal of the realm liked it to have his personal 'noon' at 12:00 when the sun was at the highest point above his palace.
And even after Germany was united into an empire, most regions kept their 'private' time. Often just 10 or 11:30 minutes of from the neighbour.
The unified german time was forced upon the regions by railway companies. It simply makes no sense that a train starts 12:00 local time and arrives at 11:55 local time.
So yes, the reason why Europe basically only has three time zones is to make trade and travel more easy
And (Score:5, Insightful)
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Pretty much. When Oracle bought the company I worked for (CS&T/Lexacom), it was for our Calendar server and apps (remember Netscape Calendar? That was us). Our server would periodically download an international air traffic controller time zone files that the aviation industry uses to synchronizes their world clocks (in terms of time zone usage... actual clocks mare timed using the atomic clocks). Our client code would download this time zone file through our server and parse them for proper display of
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I disagree, though not for the reasons you cite here.
If I were sovereign state with computer-based attack capability, I would do exactly this.
The entire nation now keeps a clock which is distinct from the rest of the world. If they were to release some sort of malware, they would have an exceedingly simple way of preventing the attacks from affecting its own systems simply by looking at the UTC offset.
Even if that isn't the impetus for the change, it would be idiotic for them not to use it for that purpose
Only half an hour (Score:5, Funny)
I'd think to ensure accuracy, they'd wind back their clocks 60 years.
Re:Only half an hour (Score:4, Funny)
I'm surprised that they decided on an even half hour offset. That's been done before - The glorious Democratic People's Republic of Korea should not be bound by convention!
To counter the western imperialist timezone scheme and it's England-based meridian, they really should be at UTC+8:22:57 -- or rather, UTC should be such that it's PYT-8:22:57.
All hail the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and its glorious leader Kim Jong-un, may he lead forever!
Re:Only half an hour (Score:4, Funny)
Instead of making Pyongyang the meridian, they should use the glorious leader's real-time position. North Korea's UTC offset would be his longitude divided by 15. Citizens would have to follow his whereabouts to know what time it is, reinforcing general interest into the leader's activities.
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They didn't die. They were carried up to heaven on a winged white horse.
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You're both right--it was an alicorn! [wikia.com] Nothing but the best for our Glorious Leader!
Re:Only half an hour (Score:5, Insightful)
The current assclown isn't going to change jack and/or squat.
He just changed the time zone, so there!
You go little Un... (Score:2)
Keep trying to poke the world in the eye with your little stick..
Seriously? Who cares? It just means that all the computers in North Korea won't show the right time until somebody decides to update the operating system..
be glad it's only a symbolic gesture (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:be glad it's only a symbolic gesture (Score:5, Funny)
Koreans, even North Koreans, have very legitimate historical reasons to tell Japan to FUCK OFF.
And everyone knows the best way to piss off a Japanese person is to be 1/2 an hour out of their timezone
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but then you can spoil all of their tv shows...just before they see it!
Re:be glad it's only a symbolic gesture (Score:5, Insightful)
Koreans, even North Koreans, have very legitimate historical reasons to tell Japan to FUCK OFF.
That is true, but how does THIS have anything to do with what Japan did to them before WW2? How's it harm Japan if NK want's to change their wristwatches? Yea, I'm sure that has half of Tokyo shaking in their boots....
This is not much more than symbolic, but NK has been reduced to making symbolic gestures for decades. (Hey, isn't that little'Un with is middle finger in the air again?) I'm laughing over here in North America, and I'm sure about all that's shaking in Japan is heads..
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It's not even symbolic, it's a resounding "that's supposed to piss us off? sure, whatever".
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Facepalm ...
That might be true for windows.
However every other decent OS simply sets the TIME variable correctly and you can have arbitrary timezones.
And I would bet you can do that under windows, too.
Re:You go little Un... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, just don't try to connect up to a NTP server or build a strat 1 server from a GPS receiver when you fudge the hardware clock... You are going to be on your own. And that's going to make things like navigation and advancing technology all that much harder there.
Little'Un just made life harder for his people by doing this, but he doesn't care. Folks have to remember ONE very important fact. Little'Un does what he does for consumption INSIDE of North Korea and that's it. The world will deride him for doing stupid things, but what matters is how the North Korean's perceive it. You can bet they all praise "Dear Leader" for his strong defiance of the Imperialist Japan and most will actually believe what they are saying. Few will realize that he's really showing his impotence, his lack of power and how the rest of the world is making fun of him and the ones that DO realize this won't say anything different because they know it means death for them and their extended families.
So while we laugh because we find it funny, in reality this is really very sad for the people it most concerns..
Re:You go little Un... (Score:4, Interesting)
Countries like North Korea are like nation-sized McDonald's restaurants: none believe the corporate bullshit, and the management knows perfectly well they don't, but everyone play their roles anyway while the clown in charge rakes in the profits. It's a little piece of Hell on Earth.
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They're up to five now?
Re: You go little Un... (Score:5, Funny)
Now all they need is some electricity to power them up.
Time to update some code (Score:5, Funny)
Darn, now I need to update all my timezone related code to handle all my North Korean customers correctly...
North Korean Industry: Precision but not Accuracy (Score:3)
Re:North Korean Industry: Precision but not Accura (Score:5, Informative)
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The Unified Korea actually set a Timezone of +8:30 GMT back in 1910. In 1912 when Japan took over, it was reset to Japanese +8:00 GMT. After liberation, South Korea briefly for a year or two went back to +8:30 for a few years in the 50's I believe, but reverted to Japanese +8:00 for economic reasons.
What possible economic reasons could there be? A 30 minute time difference isn't going to make the slightest difference to businesses. It isn't like clocks are sold with fixed time zones and sharing a time zone means they only have to design 1 model.
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Since this was posted AC, I thought I'd repeat it, because he is correct. Japan Standard Time is GMT+9:00 and so is Korean Standard Time (which is technically a different time zone followed in Korea with the same offset. Neither uses Daylight Savings Time). The half-an-hour back to GMT+8:30 moves the local noon of the time zone to the west, which makes sense.
Why the announcement? (Score:2)
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Update the Year? (Score:3)
Will it also update the year in Best Korea from 1954?
Eh, sexy lady (Score:3)
Op, op, op, op
Oppa Pyongyang style.
13 minutes off, 27 hours per day (Score:3)
The Great Leader doesn't want to conform to imperialist standards, so his new standard is 13 minutes off hours, and its days are 27 hours long so his people can work longer hours. Also, the Gread Leader made Earth rotate slower, to match is new time standard. On His birthday, as his PR agency announced, Earth will stand still for an hour out of respect for the Great Leader. This is all true, I kid you not.
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So to accept the Great Leaders great decision, do I have to get an ugly $2.00 haircut and gain 20 lbs in the gut to match the Great Leaders look?
Re:13 minutes off, 27 hours per day (Score:5, Funny)
do I have to get an ugly $2.00 haircut and gain 20 lbs in the gut ...?
Admit it, you were probably going to do that anyway, Great Leader or no.
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The Great Leader doesn't want to conform to imperialist standards, so his new standard is 13 minutes off hours, and its days are 27 hours long so his people can work longer hours. Also, the Gread Leader made Earth rotate slower, to match is new time standard. On His birthday, as his PR agency announced, Earth will stand still for an hour out of respect for the Great Leader. This is all true, I kid you not.
I saw a report the other day of NK having sent an astronaut to Saturn who landed and planted the NK flag and collected some rock samples.
Neat trick being a gas giant.
NK is right (Score:2)
Wait... (Score:5, Funny)
North Korea has clocks?
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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If by sand trickling down through a funnel into a lower repository which holds about an hours worth, and can be flipped over to repeat the process, yes, they haven't suspended gravity there...yet.
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Their sun dials told them their time zone was off by half an hour.
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They have nukes and missiles, so yeah, I'd guess they have clocks.
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It's a move for isolation (Score:2)
Re:It's a move for isolation (Score:5, Interesting)
And Newfoundland. The Labrador part of the province is at UTC-4, while the Newfoundland half is UTC-3.5.
And you wonder why Canadians always treat Newfies as different.
Incidentally, yes, that province was the source for both dog breeds, and apparently, the names got switched around - what we know as the Labrador Retriever was originally the Newfoundland, and vice-versa. Then again, easier to say a Lab than Newfie, I suppose.
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And Newfoundland. The Labrador part of the province is at UTC-4, while the Newfoundland half is UTC-3.5.
And you wonder why Canadians always treat Newfies as different.
Yup. When the CBC says some show starts at 9:00 local time, there's always a parenthetic "8:30 in Newfoundland."
I remember seeing a TV sketch long ago (maybe on Wayne and Shuster?) of a guy carrying a sign that said "The world will end at midnight." He turns around and reveals the back of the sign, where it says "11:30 in Newfoundland."
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Whoops, did I mean 30 min later, not earlier in Newfoundland?
I think I've been an ex-pat too long...
North Korean Time zone (Score:2)
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just wait till they get that cloaking device (Score:2)
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And late night television has new fodder... (Score:2)
A half-hour off from an international standard, that was supposedly "imposed" upon them specifically by the Japanese? Really? And other then yet another baffling head-shaker of a headline, how exactly do the North Korean people benefit from this change?
From his incredible over-the-top reaction to "The Interview" forcing an otherwise crappy movie into an international limelight courtesy of the Streisand Effect, to his perpetual posturing on the international stage... to this. Does Kim Jong-un not comprehend
I'm surprised (Score:2)
You'd think they'd switch to +8:43 or something, just to be different and annoy capitalist IT departments.
Come on, Un, are you even trying? (Score:2)
Missing the details (Score:3)
Obviously the time offset is way more than 30 minutes.
Like about 70 years, maybe?
This will be a burden to the Sysadmins there though: They will have to manually timesync both of their computers.
Who cares? (Score:2)
Suitable change. (Score:2)
NK already goes by their own calendar system, based on Il-sung's date of birth, it's only natural that they select their own time zone.
The funny thing is - even though their calendar is "their own" - it's based on the same gregorian calendar months and days per month, coincidentally their self-selected timezone is also based on the int'l standard. They're essentially trying to say "fuck you we go our own way", KIGTOW? Except they're doing so within the confines of the system already set (or erm.... imposed)
to paraphrase George Carlin (Score:2)
In Japan, it's 10:00. in Indonesia, it's 8:00. in Pyongyang, it's 3:42...
"What if someone changed their timezone..." (Score:2)
"What if someone changed their timezone... and none of the OS vendors in the world cooperated by updating their zone files to include the new zone?"
If no one changes their zone info files, it didn't happen, right?
They Can't Do That! (Score:4, Funny)
It could be worse (Score:2)
Didn't parts of China switch traffic lights so red meant go? I think the idea was red==communism==forward. IIRC, it caused so many problems that they quietly decided the symbolism wasn't that important.
Re:Wouldn't it make more sense? (Score:4, Funny)
Nah. Having that time offset would be admitting someone else is the center of time.
NK is really +0 and everyone else is at a -24 or more offset from them. And it has always been this way since the Eternal President created the concept of time 67 years ago.
Re:Why can't the world move beyond this crap? (Score:4, Insightful)
Second dumbest thing. Don't forget daylight savings.
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Um, timezones are needed, but summer/winter time changes are not.
Re:Why can't the world move beyond this crap? (Score:5, Insightful)
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So if time zones are as dumb and apparently useless as you propose, just how would I know what time it is in say Munich Germany while I am sitting in say Kansas City?
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It. Would. Be. The. Same.
*deep breath*
Re:Why can't the world move beyond this crap? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats sounds much more complicated than looking up a time zone, and comparing apples to apples.
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So if he wants to call a company in Germany, and wonder if it is the middle of the night for them, he would simply have to figure out the sunrise and sunset times in UTC for a geographic region, and then estimate normal business hours?
I'm sure there's an app for that. I mean, it is the 21st century last I checked. You can check the web [timeanddate.com]. Heck, I remember seeing clocks like this [wayfair.com] when I was a kid.
Re:Why can't the world move beyond this crap? (Score:4, Funny)
And that "app" is called .... are you ready for it .... TIME ZONES!
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And a deep *sigh* from me because you just don't get it. Just because the time is absolute meaning the same everywhere, it is the offsets that take into account the actual sunrise/sunset which translates to human time....unless everyone must work the same business times as you.
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The time being the same doesn't help me know if people are up.
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Clearly, it is easier to remember that there is an 8 hour difference in wall clock time for the same events between LA and London than it is to remember that there is an 8 hour difference in events for the same wall clock time between LA and London.
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Fine by me, I live in UTC +0.
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Time zones are the dumbest thing ever devised
No, they're not as dumb as what came before them. [wikipedia.org]
For all their quirks and political warts, the current time-zone system is a good compromise.
I even think Daylight Savings Time is not a bad idea. It seems I'm in good company, [wikipedia.org] although it irks me that we now spend more days of the year on Daylight Savings Time than we do on so-called Standard Time.
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Not everyone works a 9-5 job, Sherlock.
i.e. People who work graveyard shift usually don't care what time zone it is.
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Analog clocks show 12 hours, of course. An analog clock with 24 hours would be hard to read.
But analog clocks usually don't show am/pm. And that's where we started: Getting up seeing a clock say AM.
And digital clocks here in Europe show the time in 24 hours. Unless the clock is a cheap import or runs an OS made by an American company that doesn't care about the differences between cultures.
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Designed by Microsoft to for us to upgrade to Windows 10, the only version to get this new time zone. This will also mess up the cell phones that can't be updated. That should bump sales a bit.
I'm thinking they might sell two more phones this year as a result. Presently, 8 of the 10 Windows Phone owners in the world can only afford low end handsets, which is why Microsoft mostly caters to the low end market. The two people in the high end of the market (Steve Ballmer, and Stephen Elop) will surely buy a new phone however.
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Spare the bullshit.
Everything newer than XP will get a small update for the timezones. Remember when Chavez (they're all alike, these idiots...) did something similar? The Windows update that added that stupid timezone made me restart my computer, too.