North Korea into +8:30 time zone
According to many news sources, North Korea is going to change to the 8:30 time zone on August 15, one example: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33815049 This probably needs a new time zone abbreviation, some ideas: PST - Pyongyang Standard Time PYT - Pyongyang Time (based on the translation below, it sounds like this is the name they are going to use themselves) PT - Pyongyang Time (only two letters) NKT - North Korea Time The official, but extremely slow web site does not seem to support deep linking, but this morning its shown on http://www.kcna.kp/ And the raw text is: (평양 8월 7일발 조선중앙통신) 조선에서 조국해방 70돐을 맞으며 표준시간을 제정하기로 결정하였다. 5일 발표된 최고인민회의 상임위원회 정령에는 다음과 같이 지적되였다. 민족재생의 은인이시며 절세의 애국자이신 위대한 김일성동 지께서 항일의 혈전만리를 헤치시여 강도 일제를 때려부시고 조국을 해방하신 8월 15일은 파란많은 민족수난의 력사에 종지부를 찍고 우리 조국과 인민의 운명개척에서 근본적인 전환을 가져온 력사적인 날이다. 간악한 일본제국주의자들은 반만년의 오랜 력사와 문화를 자랑하던 삼천 리강토를 무참히 짓밟고 전대미문의 조선민족말살정책을 일삼으면서 조선의 표준시간까지 빼앗는 천추에 용서 못할 범죄행위를 감행하였다. 피로 얼룩진 일제의 백년죄악을 결산하고 민족의 자주권을 굳건히 수호 하며 위대한 김일성동지와 김정일동지의 불멸의 존함으로 빛나는 백두산대국 의 존엄과 위용을 영원토록 세계만방에 떨쳐나가려는것은 조선군대와 인민의 철석같은 신념이며 의지이다. 조선민주주의인민공화국 최고인민회의 상임위원회는 조국해방 70돐을 맞 으며 조선군대와 인민의 억척불변의 신념과 의지를 반영하여 다음과 같이 결 정한다. 1. 동경 127°30′을 기준으로 하는 시간(현재의 시간보다 30분 늦은 시 간)을 조선민주주의인민공화국 표준시간으로 정하고 평양시간으로 명명한다. 2. 평양시간은 주체104(2015)년 8월 15일부터 적용한다. 3. 조선민주주의인민공화국 내각과 해당 기관들은 이 정령을 집행하기 위한 실무적대책을 세울것이다.(끝) Which Google Translates to: (Pyongyang, August 07, KCNA) Occasion of 70 anniversary of the national liberation in Korea was decided to establish a standard time. 5 Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly ordinance published days doeyeotda pointed out as follows: Yisimyeo great benefactor, O peoples of the tax of Comrade Kim Il Sung, who played the Patriots had hurt the anti-Japanese to beat the strength of the clot Great assholes who liberated the country on August 15 in Japan put an end to the work eventful history of our country and the fate of peoples suffering pioneered People In a historic day it brought a fundamental shift. Japan wicked imperialists sameu days while the long history and ruthlessly trampling the Samchully Granite was proud of the culture of the Korean nation's first ever policy of extermination banmannyeon were not venturing a criminal offense to forgiveness takes away the sacral standard time line. Closing the bloody Japanese one hundred years of sin, and firmly safeguard the sovereignty of the nation and the exit Kim Il Sung and the great nations of the world and forever immortal shake the dignity and majesty of the giant glowing Paektu Kim Jong Il is a jonham of shipbuilding in the People's Army and cheolseok The same conviction and commitment. The People's Assembly of the Democratic People's Republic of highest Standing Committee decided as follows to reflect the belief and the will of the one hundred million of the Korean army and people invariably occasion of 70 anniversary of the liberation of the motherland. 1. Tokyo, 127 ° 30 hours relative to '(30 minutes later than the current time of the time) decided by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Standard Time will be referred to Pyongyang time. 2. Subject to Pyongyang Time 104 (2015) effective from August 15th. 3. The Government of North Korea and its agencies will establish the practical measures to enforce the ordinance. (End) Best regards, Steffen Thorsen - timeanddate.com
Thanks for the heads-up. Less than one weeks' notice, so we need a new tz release very soon, which will update Uruguay too of course. I wonder what cell phone users in North Korea are going to do. The usual trick is to substitute some foreign city that happens to have the correct UTC offset, but that won't work here. Steffen Thorsen wrote:
This probably needs a new time zone abbreviation
As it happens, the new zone is what zic's new %z feature was designed for, and if we use %z we won't need to invent a time zone abbreviation. Unfortunately we can't assume %z works everywhere, so the attached proposed patch does the abbreviation by hand; we can convert it to %z later. The patch also contains a change to 'Theory' to document the motivation for the %z business.
I'm not 100% certain, but one might assume that North Korean cell phones can only connect to North Korean cell towers. Those cell towers could be updated to broadcast NITZ data with the new offset. Since many phones use NITZ for auto time zone selection, it will probably work - even if there's no manual +08:30 option. And of course, some phones you can just turn off clock synchronization and just set your own local time manually.
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2015 10:11:35 -0700 From: eggert@cs.ucla.edu To: thorsen@timeanddate.com; tz@iana.org Subject: Re: [tz] North Korea into +8:30 time zone
Thanks for the heads-up. Less than one weeks' notice, so we need a new tz release very soon, which will update Uruguay too of course.
I wonder what cell phone users in North Korea are going to do. The usual trick is to substitute some foreign city that happens to have the correct UTC offset, but that won't work here.
Steffen Thorsen wrote:
This probably needs a new time zone abbreviation
As it happens, the new zone is what zic's new %z feature was designed for, and if we use %z we won't need to invent a time zone abbreviation. Unfortunately we can't assume %z works everywhere, so the attached proposed patch does the abbreviation by hand; we can convert it to %z later. The patch also contains a change to 'Theory' to document the motivation for the %z business.
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2015 08:50:02 +0200 From: Steffen Thorsen <thorsen@timeanddate.com> Message-ID: <55C4551A.1030907@timeanddate.com> | This probably needs a new time zone abbreviation, Why? It appears as if we have used KST for both north & south Korea (aside from ROK's occasional uses of summer time) more or less forever (the period when Japan was in control excepted), whether the offset has been +0830 or +0900, and including (in both countries) during (winter during) the previous period that their timezone offsets disagreed (1954-1961). And what's more, we did earlier, when the data was different, but with a similar variation. Why change now? [Aside: if an abbreviation change was warranted, picking a %z style would seem to be a very poor choice to me ... and while it is clear that actually using the new '%z' would be inappropriate yet, it is no more clear to me that older zic's, and other uses, will all support +0830 as the abbreviation.] kre
Robert Elz wrote:
it is no more clear to me that older zic's, and other uses, will all support +0830 as the abbreviation
Older zic's support +0830, so this shouldn't be a problem. I just now checked the zic from the tz-1993d edition, for example, and it works. tzdata entries for circa 1954-1961 timestamps do use "KST" to abbreviate time in Korea regardless of whether it was North (+0900) or South (+0830) Korea. However, this was purely my invention, as far as I know it has no basis and we should probably fix this too at some point. We used to be pretty loose about this sort of thing but we should steer the tz database in the direction of recording what's known instead of making stuff up.
Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2015 17:28:46 -0700 From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> Message-ID: <55C54D3E.1040108@cs.ucla.edu> | Korea regardless of whether it was North (+0900) or South (+0830) Korea. | However, this was purely my invention, as far as I know it has no basis Lots of the abbreviations were "inventions" - very many zones have no concept of a name (and hence, or an abbreviation of a name) for the time. But the API requires one, so we have to (and had to) provide something. Further, after (about) 30 years of use, the abbreviations that were invented have become, at least, familiar, even if not really understood, and changing them for no good reason would not serve any useful purpose. Just leave Korea (both parts) as KST as they (mostly) always have been. kre
Robert Elz wrote:
Just leave Korea (both parts) as KST as they (mostly) always have been.
I suppose you're right, at least for KST (the argument for wholly-invented abbreviations is less convincing). Anyway, now is not a good time to implement policy changes like this, as we need to push out a new release quickly. So I installed the attached further patch into the experimental version.
On Aug 7, 2015, at 8:28 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
tzdata entries for circa 1954-1961 timestamps do use "KST" to abbreviate time in Korea regardless of whether it was North (+0900) or South (+0830) Korea. However, this was purely my invention, as far as I know it has no basis and we should probably fix this too at some point. We used to be pretty loose about this sort of thing but we should steer the tz database in the direction of recording what's known instead of making stuff up.
As a purely symbolic gesture of support for this direction, I’ve implemented %z in my C++14 tz parser: https://github.com/HowardHinnant/date/commit/28eadffa06aa381d5ca7e2bb8893a61... Howard
participants (5)
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Howard Hinnant -
Matt Johnson -
Paul Eggert -
Robert Elz -
Steffen Thorsen