North Korea Will Change Its Time Zone This Week

It's another conciliatory gesture
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Apr 30, 2018 12:31 AM CDT
South Korea Is Taking Down Propaganda Loudspeakers
A South Korean military vehicle with loudspeakers is seen in front of the barbed-wire fence in Paju, near the border with North Korea,   (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korea will remove propaganda-broadcasting loudspeakers from the border with North Korea this week, officials said Monday, as the rivals move to follow through with their leaders' summit declaration that produced reconciliation steps without a breakthrough in the nuclear standoff. During their historic meeting Friday at a Korean border village, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to end hostile acts against each other along their tense border, establish a liaison office, and resume reunions of separated families. They also agreed to achieve a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, but failed to produce specific time frames and disarmament steps.

Seoul's Defense Ministry said it would pull back dozens of its front-line loudspeakers on Tuesday before media cameras, the AP reports. Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyunsoo Seoul expects Pyongyang to do the same. South Korea had already turned off its loudspeakers ahead of Friday's summit talks, and North Korea responded by halting its own broadcasts. Reuters reports North Korean state media on Monday announced the country will change its time zone effective Saturday. North Korea's clocks run 30 minutes behind South Korea and Japan's, and Kim was reportedly disturbed to see the unaligned clocks hanging on the same wall during the summit. The AFP reports the North shifted its clocks in 2015—on the 70th anniversary of the end of Japanese rule over the country—to the time in effect prior to Japan taking over the peninsula in 1910.

(More North Korea stories.)

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