North Korea is a wacky place. Dirt poor but nuclear-armed. Beaten down by a Kim family cult of the personality while neighboring South Korea revels in wealth and democracy.

As if the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (the official name) were not sufficiently different from everyone around them, the country’s leaders have come up with a new way to distinguish themselves.

By creating their own time zone.

When they move the clock back 30 minutes later this week, North Korea will be a half-hour behind South Korea and Japan and 30 minutes ahead of China, and in a time zone of their very own they have dubbed. “Pyongyang time”.

The reason for this?

To show Japan what’s what.

But mostly, to be different. It’s how they roll there.

The Japan bit? The official North Korea news agency is stressing that one.

“The wicked Japanese imperialists committed such unpardonable crimes as depriving Korea of even its standard time while mercilessly trampling down its land with 5,000 year-long history and culture and pursuing the unheard-of policy of obliterating the Korean nation,” according to the communist regime’s state agency.

The new time zone will take North Korea back to the time zone the whole of Korea had before the (quite unpleasant) 1910-1945 Japanese occupation.

But that is a glimmer of sense in an otherwise zany way of calculating time.

The north has its own calendar, and years are designated by their distance from the birth of founder Kim Il Sung, in 1912. Thus, the north is in Year 104. (In 2011, did they party like it was 99?)

Most of the world is time zones that strike an hour when North Korea will be on the half-hour.

But there are a handful of others who prefer to be different, as can be seen on the time zone map.

When it is noon in Greenwich Mean Time, it is 5:30 p.m. in the whole of India and 4:30 p.m. in Iran and Afghanistan, and 6:30 p.m. in Myanmar.

In the western hemisphere, Venezuela is a half hour behind Brazil to the east but a half hour ahead of Colombia to the west.

(Hello, India: May want to reconsider what you’re doing. Everyone else on the half hour — Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Venezuela, North Korea … well kind of a madhouse of polities there.

So, yes, North Korea, as of this week has its own time zone. Marching to the beat of its own addled drummer.