{"id":9912,"date":"2023-11-25T11:05:14","date_gmt":"2023-11-25T10:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.northkoreainfo.com\/?p=9912"},"modified":"2023-11-25T11:05:14","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T10:05:14","slug":"what-time-is-it-in-south-korea-and-north-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northkoreainfo.com\/what-time-is-it-in-south-korea-and-north-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"What Time Is It In South Korea And North Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"
South Korea and North Korea: What Time Is It in Each? <\/strong><\/p>\n Measuring time is a way for humanity to feel in control of their lives, and for nations, observing the same time helps enhance their unity and belonging. The two Koreas – South and North, have had different time arrangements since a massive political split following World War II. <\/p>\n The policy of unified time across the Korean peninsula ended in August 2015, when North Korea deliberately and unilaterally set its clocks 30 minutes ahead. This means that while South Korea is 9 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), North Korea is 9 hours and 30 minutes ahead. <\/p>\n In terms of South Korea, most people living in the country follow the local time in the same manner as the rest of East Asia, three hours ahead of Japan’s time and 9 hours ahead of the GMT. For example, 1 pm South Korea Time, is 12 pm Japan Time, and 4 am GMT. <\/p>\n North Korea has been on its own time zone since April 2015, having made their own minor adjustment. Such a policy is seen as an effort to sever its political ties with South Korea, which runs in line with the country’s animosity towards its southern neighbour. <\/p>\n Time experts have questioned the rationale behind North Korea’s policy of having a separate timezone, suggesting that scarce resources could have been better used elsewhere. Moreover, some have argued that by maintaining its own time, the North can further distance itself from the rest of the world, something which its leaders possibly deem as beneficial. <\/p>\n The disparity between both timezones only serves to emphasize the massive political schism between the two Koreas, which have been politically and ideologically at odds with each other for decades. Even so, people living in South Korea are still well-informed with what is happening in the North, which suggests that there is still some form of cultural exchange taking place. <\/p>\n Since 2015, North Korea has been on its ‘Pyongyang Time’ – a 30 minutes difference from Seoul’s local time zone. It is believed that North Korea is trying to create an atmosphere of differentiation from the South, and the change in time is seen as part of this move. <\/p>\n In North Korea, time is based on UTC+09:30, which comes a little later than the UTC+09:00 used by South Korea. This means that as well as being behind 30 minutes compared to the South, the North is also slightly behind the UTC+08:00 used by Japan and China, among others. <\/p>\n Pyongyang’s adoption of UTC+09:30 is an indicator of the self-proclaimed ‘Juche’ or ‘Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism’ ideology – an effort from its leadership to assert the nation’s own political agenda. <\/p>\n It’s interesting to note that while North Korea has adopted a different time zone to the South and the rest of the world, this hasn’t affected the way it measures the time of day. The clocks in the North adopt the same 24-hour cycle as the rest of the region. <\/p>\n Before the re-arrangement of South and North Korean time, the Korean peninsula was on Korean Standard Time (KST), with an offset of UTC+09:00. This meant that all of the Korean peninsula, from East to West, was running on the same time zone. <\/p>\n It was during the Japanese colonial era that KST was first adopted across the peninsula, when Japan forced its colonies to observe Japanese Standard Time – or UTC+09:00. This continued until the end of World War II, when the two Koreas declared independence from Japan and went their separate ways. <\/p>\n KST has been in place for most of modern Korean history, with the nation having reclaimed their own time zone after the Korean War finished in 1953. It was only in August 2015, when North Korea opened the political gap between itself and the South, that the time differences were cemented, each side keeping their respective clocks.<\/p>\n The separate time difference between South and North Korea has come as a huge inconvenience to pre-existing transportation links, as well as links between families still separated on either sides. <\/p>\n For instance, travelling between South and North Korea went from a relatively simple administrative and logistical task to a much more complicated one, with airlines having to adjust their existing route timing for the North and South respectively. <\/p>\nHow Does North Korea Measure Time?<\/h2>\n
What Happened Before The Change?<\/h2>\n
The Consequences Of Different Time Zones<\/h2>\n