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Were they granted the ability to manipulate time and space, we’re fairly certain that most world leaders would choose to go back in time in order to benefit their own country somehow, replaying disastrous moments in their history and righting wrongs that would later cost them dearly. (One can only imagine a world in which the likes of Katie Hopkins and Donald Trump were never put in front of a camera…)

But today, totalitarian dictatorship North Korea declared that it would be turning the clock back by just 30 minutes, thus establishing “Pyongyang Time”, in order to mark its independence from the “wicked Japanese imperialists” who meddled with their clocks to begin with.

As of August 15 this year, North Korea will begin running 30 minutes behind its neighbours Japan and South Korea, countries with which it has shared a time zone for more than 100 years.

The move, which North Korean news agency KCNA described as righting a wrong committed by the Japanese during their occupation of the country, is intended to further establish North Korea’s independence and presence on the world stage.

August 15 marks the 70th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan at the end of the Second World War, thus providing North Korea’s young leader with an ideal opportunity to flex his muscle and assure his people that he is very much in control.

“The wicked Japanese imperialists committed such unpardonable crimes as depriving Korea of even its standard time,” a statement from the country’s news agency said. By establishing its own time zone, North Korea would be responding to Japan’s “unheard-of policy of obliterating the Korean nation”.

In truth, both North and South Korea’s clocks ran 8.5 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time until Japan colonised the peninsula in 1910 following the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, changing their clocks to align with those in Japan, which run at UCT +9 hours to this day.

While South Korea also switched time zones following the Japanese occupation, as the Huffington Post reports, the country chooses to remain in the same time zone as its neighbour to the east for the sake of practicality and maintaining international standards.

What the people of North Korea will be permitted to do with their additional half hour when Pyongyang Time takes effect is unclear, but here’s hoping it involves unicorns, or at the very last some kind of troubling musical performance.

Source: BBC News, The Huffington Post
Featured image via YouTube