Regular old time zones are not good enough for North Korea. The hermit country has been in the same time zone as Japan for more than 100 years—ever since the Japanese colonized the Korean peninsula in 1910. Now, the people of North Korea are changing their clocks to mark the 70th anniversary of their liberation from—as the state news agency put it—the “wicked Japanese imperialists.” Instead of jumping an hour to another recognized time zone, though, North Korea is just setting its clocks back half an hour, which may make things rather confusing when it comes to being on time for meetings with other countries.
