Windows could soon start allowing users to live on North Korea time.
Hours after the Korean Central News Agency reported that, starting Aug. 15, North Korea will implement a new time zone -- the one it had before coming under Japan's colonial rule -- Microsoft announced that it's considering the idea of adding support for the time zone in Windows.
"Democratic People's Republic of Korea just announced that it will implement its own time zone with UTC +8:30. Windows is currently investigating creating a new time zone to address this change, and the update as well as the change details will be available later this month or the beginning of September," Microsoft wrote in a short post on its Daylight Saving Time & Time Zone Blog.
Such changes are uncommon for Microsoft -- reflecting how unusual it is for new time zones to be established in the first place. It's more typical for the company to tweak Windows in order to accommodate changes to time zones, such as Egypt's decision to halt Daylight Savings Time during Ramadan last year.
Google and Apple have not announced plans to reflect the new time zone in their operating systems.