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posted by mrpg on Saturday May 05 2018, @08:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the if-they-use-dst-it'd-be-an-act-of-war dept.

North Korea has switched from the UTC+08:30 offset, which it has used since 2015, back to UTC+09:00 (Korea Standard Time), matching South Korea in a "first practical step" towards reunification:

North Korea has changed [its] time zone to match the South after last week's inter-Korean summit, according to state media. At 23:30 local time (15:00 GMT) on Friday the country's clocks moved forward 30 minutes to midnight. The reset is "the first practical step" to speed up Korean unification, the official KCNA news agency 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. Mr Trump will host South Korea's president Moon Jae-in at the White House on 22 May to discuss the upcoming meeting.

Related: Massachusetts Commission Considering a Potential Move to the Atlantic Time Zone
President Trump Tweets about Nuclear Talks with North Korea
U.S. and North Korean Representatives Holding Secret Talks to Plan for Summit
Kim Jong-un Crosses Into South Korea for Summit
South Korea to Remove Loudspeakers at Border


Original Submission

Related Stories

Massachusetts Commission Considering a Potential Move to the Atlantic Time Zone 43 comments

The Special Commission on the Commonwealth's Time Zone will vote on November 1st on a final draft of a report recommending that Massachusetts move to the Atlantic Time Zone from the Eastern Time Zone:

A commission is studying the possibility of having Massachusetts join the Atlantic Time Zone, putting it permanently an hour ahead of its current Eastern slot.

That would mean later sunsets in the colder months, and would put the state on a zonal par with the likes of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Bermuda rather than the rest of the eastern United States.

The 11-member commission submitted a draft report on the move in September, and will vote on a final one on November 1. If that gets a green-light, the recommendation will go to lawmakers—who may or may not pursue the move.

Maine and New Hampshire would likely join Massachusetts in switching to the Atlantic Time Zone.

2014 editorial on the benefits. Also at NBC.


Original Submission

Politics: President Trump Tweets about Nuclear Talks with North Korea 61 comments

foxnews.com/us/2018/03/06/trump-cites-possible-progress-in-talks-with-nkorea.html

Trump commented Tuesday on Twitter after the South Korean government announced that North Korea has agreed to halt tests of nuclear weapons and missiles if it holds talks with the U.S. on denuclearization. South Korea and North Korea have also agreed to hold summit talks in late April.

Trump tweeted: "Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned. The World is watching and waiting! May be false hope, but the U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!"

The Associated Press has some additional information:

While the offer of talks could ease tensions, the adversaries will still have to overcome deep mutual suspicion. The U.S. has consistently demanded North Korea give up its nukes, which the reclusive socialist state had previously insisted was off the table until Washington abandoned its "hostile policy" toward it. At a minimum, the Americans wanted a halt in nuclear and missile testing for talks to begin.

"Maybe this is a breakthrough. I seriously doubt it," Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told a Senate hearing Tuesday. He said his doubts are grounded in what he called failed efforts by previous U.S. administrations to negotiate with North Korea over its nuclear program.

Coats said Kim is "very calculating" and views his nuclear capabilities as "essential to his well-being as well as the well-being of his nation."

Politics: U.S. and North Korean Representatives Holding Secret Talks to Plan for Summit 19 comments

Secret, direct talks underway between US and North Korea

The United States and North Korea have been holding secret, direct talks to prepare for a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, a sign that planning for the highly anticipated meeting is progressing, several administration officials familiar with the discussions tell CNN.

Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo and a team at the CIA have been working through intelligence back-channels to make preparations for the summit, the officials said. American and North Korean intelligence officials have spoken several times and have even met in a third country, with a focus on nailing down a location for the talks.

Although the North Korean regime has not publicly declared its invitation by Kim Jong Un to meet with Trump, which was conveyed last month by a South Korean envoy, several officials say North Korea has since acknowledged Trump's acceptance, and Pyongyang has reaffirmed Kim is willing to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Also at The Hill.

See also: How the USB Taught North Korea to Love K-Pop


Original Submission

Breaking News: Kim Jong-un Crosses Into South Korea for Summit 33 comments

North Korea's Kim Jong-un crosses into South Korea

Kim Jong-un has become the first North Korean leader to set foot in South Korea by crossing the military line that has divided the peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953. In a moment rich with symbolism and pomp, South Korean leader Moon Jae-in and Mr Kim shook hands at the border. Mr Kim said he hoped for "frank" discussion in a warm opening exchange.

Just months ago North Korean rhetoric was warlike, but now they may discuss a peace treaty and nuclear weapons. Much of what the summit will focus on has been agreed in advance, but many analysts remain deeply sceptical about the North's apparent enthusiasm for engagement.

Also at The Guardian (live) and Reuters:

During their private meeting, Kim told Moon he came to the summit to end the history of conflict and joked he was sorry for keeping Moon up with his late night missile tests, a South Korean official said.

North Korea's nuclear site collapse may be reason Kim Jong Un ceased bomb tests, scientists say

North Korea's nuclear test site has collapsed after the region sustained damage from five nuclear blast trials, Chinese scientists said Wednesday — leading many to believe it may be the reason why Kim Jong Un suddenly announced the rogue regime would freeze its nuclear and missile tests.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

Politics: South Korea to Remove Loudspeakers at Border 77 comments

"Seoul's Defense Ministry said Monday it will pull back dozens of its frontline loudspeakers on Tuesday.

It says Seoul expects Pyongyang to do the same.

South Korea had turned off its loudspeakers ahead of Friday's summit talks, and North Korea responded by halting its own broadcasts." foxnews.com/world/2018/04/30/latest-s-korea-to-remove-loudspeakers-at-border.html

Seoul had blasted propaganda messages and K-pop songs from border loudspeakers since the North's fourth nuclear test in early 2016. The North quickly matched the South's action with its own border broadcasts.

"South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Monday that President Trump deserves to win a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in talks to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and end the decades-long war between the North and South.


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by SparkyGSX on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:11PM (16 children)

    by SparkyGSX (4041) on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:11PM (#676153)

    This all seems to good to be true. A few months ago, Kim Jong-Un and Trump were boasting about nuclear buttons, and now, suddenly, North Korea promises to play nice, not to make nuclear weapons, and want to reunite with South Korea? I sincerely hope it's all true, but I find it very hard to believe.

    I'd never though I'd say this, but with all the childish crap coming from Trump, Kim Jong-Un seems to be the mature and responsible one here.

    --
    If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
    • (Score: 2) by mendax on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:25PM (1 child)

      by mendax (2840) on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:25PM (#676157)

      I agree. Trust the North Koreans and die, perhaps literally.

      --
      It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @05:28PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @05:28PM (#676409)

        What did North Koreans do to you? Did they pee in your tea? Seriously, have you even met one? Do you believe every lie your government tells you?

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by fishybell on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:26PM

      by fishybell (3156) on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:26PM (#676158)

      I'm not an optimist on these sorts of things but things definitely seem to be improving. I'll take more world peace -- even if it comes in purely symbolic increments -- over less world peace any day of the week.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:51PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:51PM (#676167)

      This all seems to good to be true.

      I wholeheartedly agree. It's common knowledge that Trump can be swayed by flattery. I think Kim Jong-Un is playing Trump in order to get a face-to-face meeting - the first between a North Korean dictator and an American President. Once legitimized by this meeting Kim Jong-Un can consolidate his power base in North Korea and demand international respect.

      Even if a deal is struck it could turn out like all the other deals: North Korea lies about compliance long enough to get enough resources inside their borders to last until the next American President thinks he is smarter than his predecessors.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @06:01AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @06:01AM (#676270)

        > Once legitimized by this meeting Kim Jong-Un can consolidate his power base in North Korea and demand international respect.

        I don't think it's gonna be that easy, it's not like Trump has much international respect either.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by tftp on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:08PM (5 children)

      by tftp (806) on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:08PM (#676172) Homepage

      I'd never though I'd say this, but with all the childish crap coming from Trump, Kim Jong-Un seems to be the mature and responsible one here.

      Kim has only a narrow window of opportunity here. He is not clearly related to anything heinous - say, torpedoing a ship like his father. Only a respectable leader can participate in summits. If he waits long enough, something bad will happen and will be attributed to him, and the doors will close.

      On the other side, unification is needed because Kim, a sufficiently young person, probably does not want to rule a concentration camp. His country was poor to begin with, and decades of juche only made things worse. His country may not even survive without changes.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:26PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:26PM (#676178)

        Kim has only a narrow window of opportunity here. He is not clearly related to anything heinous

        Think he can blame his half-bro's assassination on the CIA?

        Anyway Obama and other US presidents have been linked to more heinous stuff than torpedoing a ship. Similar for other leaders. Never stopped them from participating in summits.

        • (Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:47PM

          by tftp (806) on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:47PM (#676189) Homepage
          That's where "clearly" comes into play. Wrt Obama, Kim is not in position to define what words mean. He has to play on someone's else field by someone else's rules. Goalposts have little feet and can move. The field is full of remotely controlled mines. His best bet is to discuss reunification only with President of SK, as maintaining the enmity is too important for outside countries.
      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 06 2018, @12:13AM (2 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday May 06 2018, @12:13AM (#676199) Journal

        On the other side, unification is needed because Kim, a sufficiently young person, probably does not want to rule a concentration camp.

        Guessing his motives is not a great idea. He did what he needed to do and killed who he needed to kill to consolidate power before this point. Was all that just to silence any potential opposition to a peaceful reunification? Or does he want to remain a dictator and is using the same stalling tactics as his father before him?

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @06:08AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @06:08AM (#676273)

          I don't know about most of his motivations, but I'm 100% sure that one of them is trying to stay alive. A despot has to kill all potential rivals, to stave off his own demise. As seen by assassinations of his family members in other countries, it's not like he could avoid the conflict by running away. It's literally kill or be killed.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @02:55PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @02:55PM (#676658)

          Just imagine if one day you woke up as him and you still wanted to live your "great dictator lifestyle". Which probably isn't that bad. You'd probably do about the same things he is doing in order to survive and maintain that lifestyle. Try to get nuclear weapons. Then if it fails, try plan B which is what he's probably doing now.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:08PM

      by zocalo (302) on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:08PM (#676173)
      The DPRK's usual modus operandi is to act contrite, make some small concesssions, and offer a few major promises to come later in return for easing of sanctions, etc. then, once it gets what it wants, reneges on the major promises and often rolls back some of the concessions as well. So far all the DPRK has really done is make those small concessions, so until there's one of those major promises actually delivered on in a non-reversible way I'm going to remain skeptical that this time is going to be any different.

      That said, with the literal collapse of their nuclear test facility and even the DPRK's "allies" doing more to enforce the UN's sanctions, I am hopeful that perhaps they actually are up against a financial wall this time and have realised that they *really* need to come to the table and rethink their Juche approach, at least a little. For all Trump's rhetoric and hawks like Bolton in his inner circle, I doubt that the DPRK would really think that the US would initiate a war on the peninsula if they were to just tone it down a little, so unless Pompeo made some pretty significant promises during his Easter visit, I can't really see any other reason they'd suddenly start playing nice. Even if it all goes well, I doubt there's going to a reunification any time soon though; the issue of what happens to Kim and the burden it would place on South Korea making German reunification look cheap, not to mention finding an approach that the Chinese and US will be both happy with, seem like they'll scupper that.
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:40PM

      by Arik (4543) on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:40PM (#676186) Journal
      It seems more surprising than it is because the media is more worried about drama than accuracy.

      They paint Kim as a tin-hat dictator who inherited the country, well there's some truth to that. But he's also someone that spent much of his youth attending exclusive private schools in Switzerland where he was described as well behaved, perhaps shy; and he was not always the heir apparent, his brother Jong-nam was the anointed heir until 2001 or later.

      Furthermore these moves are not so surprising, in fact they're somewhat expected. He's signaled well ahead of time that he's going to try to improve the economy and move away from the military-first doctrine that keeps it strangled. But to do that he needs to end the war. If he were seen as weakening their defenses without first doing something about the constant threat of attack he would become an ex-dictator quite quickly. He doesn't want to be an ex-dictator. What he wants probably looks a bit more like Deng Xiaoping - a market reformer yes, but still a dictator.

      Moon, also, has his own reasons to want to end the war, though I suspect the south may have a slightly different picture of how this is supposed to go down.

      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @11:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @11:11PM (#676191)

      Being "diplomatic" isn't the beginning and end of diplomacy. Try that 100% of the time, and you get walked all over.

      Sometimes you have to seem a bit crazy. Sometimes you have to do things that "refined" and "proper" "educated" people see as being "childish crap". Tweeting out a vague threat to nuke a country is not automatically the wrong thing to do; in some cases it can deliver results. The same goes for calling an opponent "Rocketman" or "short and fat".

      The world does not work as many are taught to believe. This is true in business, in dating, in politics, in war... and certainly in diplomacy.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Sunday May 06 2018, @03:26PM (1 child)

      by Immerman (3985) on Sunday May 06 2018, @03:26PM (#676378)

      I read a news piece attributing the sudden change of face to North Korea's last nuke test blowing a hole through the side of the mountain they were testing under, and caused substantial collapse. If true, that would mean that in one swoop they destroyed their testing facility, inflicted an unknown degree of radioactive contamination on their country, and possibly killed, injured, and/or radiation-poisoned a substantial portion of their nuclear research team. That could indeed be good motive to start making nice.

      An alternative is that Jong Un and his cabinet/puppet-masters realized that adopting his father's "crazy military despot" act wasn't going to work in the face of a US president who demonstrates a far broader and apparently genuine disconnection from reality. Not to mention China apparently starting to tire of constantly covering their asses.

      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday May 07 2018, @12:41AM

        by Arik (4543) on Monday May 07 2018, @12:41AM (#676501) Journal
        Yes, I heard that rumor too.

        They had foreign visitors recently to dispel the rumor. It's false. The site was still operational very recently. It was shut down voluntarily.
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @09:36PM (#676161)

    ...for both sysadmins in North Korea.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:07PM (2 children)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:07PM (#676171) Homepage Journal

    I am really honored frankly to have played such a big role in hopefully, hopefully, getting rid of this issue. We have to look at it, we have to see is it real, is it proper, what's on it, but I hope it checks out beautifully. I am really proud, I am really honored. So many people are thanking and honoring me. President Moon says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize. My guys in Congress -- 18 guys in the House -- sent a letter to the Nobel Committee to say I should get it. Believe me, it's never been more deserved.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @04:28PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @04:28PM (#676390)

      The Nobel Committee forwarded that letter to The NoBull Committee.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @06:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @06:57PM (#676423)

      Dennis Rodman will get the Noble.

      Beaten again by a black man no less. Your grandpa will rollover upon learning this failure.

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