Just when you think North Korea has done it all, the country and it’s leaders have managed to  make it back into International news headlines. This area, which is in a world of its own, is the most secretive country in the world. Now, reports state that North Korea has created a time zone just for itself. This new time zone could definitely cause some problems in the future.

North Korea will now set it’s clocks back by 30 minutes starting on August 15th. This time, which be known as “”Pyongyang time”, makes North Korea even more isolated before. North Korea, which already has it’s own calendar, will now be 30 minutes behind Tokyo and Seoul. This change in time will have negative effects on inter-Korean exchanges. Jeong Joon-hee, the South Korean Unification ministry spokesman, was quoted saying “Some difficulties are likely to come in inter-Korean exchanges, including flows to and from the Kaesong Industrial Complex”. It is still unknown whether or not South Korea will follow suit with the time change. Moving forward, only time will tell how the situation in North Korea plays out.

Reading the headline of this CNN article did not surprise me at all in the least. North Korea always finds a new way to get the world’s attention, and creating their own time zone certainly accomplishes this. This article was intriguing because it gave me more background on North Korea and it’s history. Moving forward, I will continue to follow this story because it affects international relations. This change in time only pushes North Korea further into isolation from the rest of the world. Hearing multiple stories about what goes on behind the walls of North Korea is interesting, and a new time zone certainly adds to the mystery.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/07/asia/north-korea-time-zone/index.html