World

North Korea changes its time zone to match South

07:28 am on 5 May 2018

North Korea is changing its time zone to match the South after last week's inter-Korean summit, according to its state media.

Photo: AFP

The country will move its clocks forward by 30 minutes on Saturday, said the official KCNA news agency.

The reset is "the first practical step" to "speed up the process for the North and the South to become one", it said.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump says he has a date for his meeting with the North's leader, Kim Jong-Un.

"We now have a date and we have a location, we'll be announcing it soon," Mr Trump told US journalists outside the White House on Friday, adding that he was expecting "very, very good things" to come out it.

Until now, it was on Pyongyang Time, which is half an hour behind South Korea and Japan.

It introduced the extra 30 minutes in 2015 as a stand against "wicked Japanese imperialists", because its hours were changed to match Tokyo's when the Korean peninsula was under Japan's rule.

South Korea (which is nine hours ahead of GMT) had also moved away from Japanese time in the 1950s, but it switched back again in the 1960s.

When will Trump and Kim meet?

President Trump did not share details on the time and place for the landmark meeting with Mr Kim.

It is expected to happen in May or early June.

Mr Trump has previously expressed a preference for meeting in the demilitarized zone between the North and South, but Singapore is also an option.

The meeting was suggested and provisionally agreed in March, after a South Korean delegation met Mr Kim in Pyongyang and later visited the White House.

America's main goal is to secure the North's nuclear disarmament.

Discussions are already believed to be under way to secure the release of three US hostages held in North Korea before the two leaders come face to face.

"We're having very substantive talks with North Korea and a lot of things have already happened with respect to the hostages," said Mr Trump on Friday.

He denied suggestions that he was considering taking US troops out of South Korea as part of the negotiations.