Did You Know?
A Time Zone That Lasted Exactly 994 Days
The Pyongyang Metro opened on 6 September 1973. Its platforms sit more than 110 metres below ground — among the deepest anywhere — and the descent by escalator takes roughly three and a half to four minutes. The stations were built to double as shelters, with heavy steel blast doors, and the depth holds the temperature at about 20°C all year regardless of the season outside.
The network is two lines, 16 stations, 22.5 kilometres. Daily ridership is estimated at somewhere between 300,000 and 700,000 — the range is wide because reliable figures are hard to obtain. The station names translate as Reunification, Rejuvenation, Glory, Triumph, Red Star, Liberation, Construction.
Above ground, the city holds a different kind of record. On 14 August 2007, Guinness World Records recognised the Arirang Mass Games as the largest gymnastic display ever staged, with 100,090 participants at the Rungrado 1st of May Stadium. The count was adjudicated on site. The card-stunt mosaics on the stadium's north side are formed by more than 30,000 schoolchildren, each holding coloured cards. Participants are largely students who rehearse for months, which has drawn concern from outside observers.
The clock: a hundred thousand people moving in unison is one form of synchronisation. Moving a country's clocks by decree is another, and Pyongyang has done that twice in a decade.
On 5 August 2015, the government announced that from 15 August the country would move from UTC+9 to UTC+8:30, under the name Pyongyang Time. The date was the 70th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule, and state media presented the change as removing a standard imposed during the 1910–1945 occupation. From 1908 until 1912, the peninsula had used UTC+8:30 — the same offset.
It put North Korea half an hour behind South Korea, which had itself used UTC+8:30 between 1954 and 1961.
It lasted exactly 994 days.
On 27 April 2018, at the inter-Korean summit at Panmunjom, Kim Jong Un met South Korean President Moon Jae-in. According to the state news agency KCNA, he remarked on the two clocks on the wall of the summit venue — one labelled Pyongyang, one Seoul — describing the sight as "a painful wrench."
Two days later the reversal was announced. On 30 April 2018 the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly adopted a decree titled On Resetting Pyongyang Time, and on 5 May the clocks moved forward thirty minutes to rejoin UTC+9.
Very few countries have created a time zone and abolished it again in the same decade.
Sources
- Wikipedia, *Time in North Korea* (August 5, 2015 decision, effective August 15; name "Pyongyang Time"; South Korean authorities' concerns about Kaesong Industrial Zone)
- Geography Worlds (full **994 days** slice: August 15, 2015 – May 5, 2018; UTC+8:30 from 1908 to 1912; South Korea's use of UTC+8:30 from 1954-1961)
- People's Daily/Xinhua and GlobalSecurity (Date May 5, 2018; *On Resetting Pyongyang Time* decree of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly; Kim Jong Un's statement about the two clocks as reflected in KCNA)
- Newsweek and World Economic Forum (29 April 2018 announcement; Panmunjom summit context)
- Al Jazeera, 7 August 2015 (KCNA's framing: the "wicked Japanese imperialists" had deprived Korea of its standard time)
- mapa-metro.com and Young Pioneer Tours (metro opening 6 September 1973; 110 m depth; 2 lines, 16 stations, 22.5 km; 300,000-700,000 daily passengers; shelter design; ~20°C year-round)
- Wikipedia, *Arirang Mass Games* and Guinness World Records (Guinness registered 14 August 2007, 100,090 participants; more than 30,000 card-holding students; start 2002)