Gregorian Calendar Exception

Most of the world uses the Gregorian Calendar. We are currently in the year 2013. Even China also follows this calendar, although it also celebrates its own New year.

North Korea uses the names of months we are familiar with, but the calendar year one begins in 1912 rather than two thousand years ago. That year, 1912 was the birth of former North Korea despot Kim Il-sung (grandfather of Kim Jong-un). Three years after Kim Il-sung’s death, the nation promulgated the new Juche calendar after the state’s official ideology of the same name.

It is a government allusion to the idea of Kim Il-sung as god. When Kim Il-sung died, his son and successor, Kim Jong-il redid the calendar to imply that his father was divine. In September 1998, the North Korean constitution deemed Kim Il-sung the “Eternal President of the Republic.” Nice to have a family tradition that changes the calendar for an entire nation.