North Korea has turned its clocks back by 30 minutes to mark its liberation from the Japanese at the end of World War 2.
North Korea had been nine hours ahead of GMT – like Japan and South Korea.
The new time zone, which North Korea calls “Pyongyang Time,” was adopted by the then-unified Korea in 1908, but changed to the Japanese time zone on Jan. 1, 1912, two years after the peninsula was colonized.
North Korea announced the move earlier this week, surprising South Korea whose president warned it ran counter to efforts to foster co-operation.
Bells rang out in the capital Pyongyang at midnight on Friday as the new time zone came into effect.
“This is a great event in the history of the Korean nation, as it is of great significance in completely eradicating the leftovers of the Japanese imperialists in all fabrics of social life,” state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported earlier this week.
