KYODO_N.KOREA NEW TIME ZONE_20180505

PYONGYANG, North Korea, -May 5: North Korea on Saturday returned to the same time zone as South Korea as the first step to follow up on last week's inter-Korea summit, the North's official news agency reported. The standard times in North and South Korea had differed by 30 minutes since August 2015, when the North set its clocks back by half an hour. "The time-resetting is the first practical step taken after the historic third north-south summit meeting to speed up the process for the north and the south to become one and turn their different and separated things into the same and single ones," the Korean Central News Agency said. The action came after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un proposed it to South Korean President Moon Jae In during their talks on April 27 at the border truce village of Panmunjeom. Kim remarked at the time that seeing clocks with two different times at the facility where the inter-Korean summit was held "made my heart heavy," according to the South Korean government. KCNA had reported that the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's top legislative body, adopted on Monday a decree to change Pyongyang time back to its previous standard. Until August 2015, North Korea was in the same time zone as Japan and South Korea, nine hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. It was established during Japan's colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.