Koreas Unite In Time: Kim Jong Un Thought 2 Time Zones 'Painful'

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country will reset their clocks to match that of its neighboring country, during a summit with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in on Friday.

The decision to move its nation’s clock forward by 30 minutes and unifying the time zones of the two halves of the Korean peninsula was taken by Kim after he found it “heartbreaking” to see two clocks showing different times for Pyongyang and Seoul, hanging at the summit’s venue at the border village of Panmunjom.

"Noting that it was a painful wrench to see two clocks indicating Pyongyang and Seoul times hanging on a wall of the summit venue, he proposed unifying the times of the north and the south before doing anything else," Korean Central News Agency was quoted as saying by Korea Times.

In a press conference Sunday, Moon's chief press secretary Yoon Young-chan told reporters what the North Korean leader had proposed.

"Since it was we who changed the time standard, we will return to the original one. You can make it public," Kim was quoted as saying by Yoon.

The two Korean used to have the same standard time prior to 2015, when North Korea announced that it will be winding back its nation’s clock by 30 minutes. The move was done in order to return the nation to the time zone used before Japan’s colonial rule on the peninsula from 1910-1945 and to commemorate the 70th anniversary of its liberation from Tokyo, Korean Herald reported.

The Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's parliament, announced that Kim’s decree will be implemented starting May 5.

Kim’s promise to return the two Koreas back to same time zone, though verbal, was seen as a significant effort by the North Korean leader to improve ties with its Southern counterpart.

"The move seems to indicate Chairman Kim's active willingness for improving inter-Korean relations and seeking harmony with the international community. It also shows the country's resolve to implement inter-Korean agreements at a fast pace," Baik Tae-hyun, spokesman at Seoul's Ministry of Unification told a press briefing.

Kim’s friendly approach was seen as a promising sign, ahead of his much-awaited meeting with President Donald Trump. Although no specific date has been set for the upcoming meeting, it is scheduled to take place “in the next three or four weeks." The two locations under consideration for the meeting are Mongolia and Singapore.

Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said it is highly likely the United States would take the opportunity of the meeting to strike a deal with North Korea regarding “the range of nuclear weapons and facilities to be dismantled and specific time-frame to do so.”

Trump, however, warned that he is prepared to abandon the meeting midway if the peace talks did not go as planned and North Korea did not agree to relinquish its atomic arsenal.