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S. Korea expresses dissatisfaction with DPRK for changing standard time

Xinhua, August 10, 2015 Adjust font size:

South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly denounced the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Monday for changing its standard time 30 minutes behind South Korea without any prior consultations.

The DPRK said Friday that it would push back its standard time by 30 minutes to GMT+8:30 from Aug. 15, a day marking the 70th anniversary of the Korean Peninsula's liberation from the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule.

Pyongyang said the standard time of GMT+9:00, which is being adopted by South Korea and Japan, was a vestige forcibly imposed under the Japanese colonial rule. The peninsula's standard time had been at GMT+8:30, but was changed to the same as Japan in 1912.

South Korea changed its standard time in 1954 to GMT+8:30, but it was reverted to Japan standard time in 1961 after late President Park Chung-hee, father of incumbent President Park Geun- hye, took power.

"North Korea (DPRK) divided even (the two Koreas') standard time while giving no response to our dialogue offer. It is equal to running counter to efforts at inter-Korean cooperation and peaceful unification as well as dismissing the international society's opinion," Park said during a meeting with senior presidential aides.

Park noted that it was very regrettable for the DPRK to announce the standard time change without any advance consultations even after South Korea has proposed a series of actions to restore homogeneity of the peoples to mark the 70th anniversary of the Korean Peninsula's division.

The president expressed worries about the deepening disparity between the two Koreas caused by the unilateral time change, urging the DPRK to return to a road for restoring homogeneity and linkage of the peninsula.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said in a statement that the time gap of 30 minutes between the two Koreas is feared to further deepen differences between the two countries and make harder inter- Korean cooperation.

The ministry's spokesman told a press briefing that the standard time is set by the hour according to international norms, noting that the ministry would make efforts to minimize possible ramifications of the DPRK's time change on the operations of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, an inter-Korean industrial zone located in the DPRK's border town of Kaesong. Endi