World Clock — Korea Time vs Your City

Why the gap changes twice a year — and it is not Korea's doing

KST never moves, so every shift in the difference comes from your side of the map — but the direction depends on which side of Korea you sit on. If your city is behind Korea, switching to summer time shrinks the gap by an hour and putting the clocks back widens it again. If your city is ahead — Sydney, Auckland — summer time widens the gap instead. Typical figures:

• New York: 14 hours behind Korea in winter, 13 during US daylight time.
• London: 9 hours behind in winter, 8 during British Summer Time.
• Sydney: 1 hour ahead of Korea normally, 2 hours ahead during Australian daylight time.
• Tokyo: identical — Japan is also UTC+9 all year round, as are Palau and Yakutsk in eastern Russia.
• Beijing, Taipei, Singapore, Manila: 1 hour behind. Bangkok, Jakarta: 2 hours. Delhi: 3.5 hours.

Korea and daylight saving time

Korea last ran summer time in 1987 and 1988, around the Seoul Olympics, and has not used it since. Proposals resurface occasionally but none have been adopted. For a traveller that is genuinely useful: the offset you work out while planning is still correct when you land, and still correct on the day you fly home.

One footnote that confuses older sources — North Korea used a separate UTC+8:30 clock for a few years before returning to UTC+9 in 2018. South Korea ran a half-hour offset of its own in the 1950s, but has held UTC+9 without interruption since 1961.

Check the date, not only the hour

Korea sits far enough east that it is frequently already tomorrow in Seoul while it is still today where you are. That single fact causes most scheduling mistakes: a call booked for "Friday morning" from Los Angeles lands on Saturday in Seoul, and a livestream or ticket sale announced in KST falls in the middle of your night.

Two rules that save trouble. Times printed on boarding passes, KTX tickets and hotel bookings are always local time at that place — never convert them. And online check-in windows open relative to the departure airport's clock, so a flight leaving Korea opens on Korean time, not yours.

When Korea is actually awake

Rough hours to aim at: offices 09:00–18:00 on weekdays with lunch around noon, banks 09:00–16:00 weekdays only, government and immigration counters weekdays only. Most Korean customer-service lines follow the same pattern, and English-language support usually runs a shorter day than the Korean one.

From Europe, the close of the Korean working day lands in your morning — around 09:00 in London in winter and 10:00 during British Summer Time, and mid-morning, roughly 10:00 to 11:00, in central Europe. From North America, the Korean working day runs through your previous evening and overnight. Shops are the exception — malls and restaurants stay open late into the Korean evening, which is a friendlier window for a video call home than for reaching an office.

Frequently asked questions

Is Korea ahead of or behind my country?
Korea is on UTC+9, which puts it ahead of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and all of the Americas. It is level with Japan and behind eastern Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Pick your city above for the exact figure today.

How should I write a time so a Korean contact reads it the same way?
Give the date as well as the hour and label the zone — "Friday 14:00 KST" rather than "2pm". Korean tickets and timetables are printed on a 24-hour clock, so 14:00 is read at a glance while "2pm" invites a second guess. Putting your own zone in brackets afterwards saves a round of email whenever the two ends are on different dates.

If something is scheduled for "today" in Korea, when does that day end for me?
At midnight in Seoul, which is why a Korean deadline can expire while your own day still has hours left in it. Work out Korean midnight in your own clock once and keep it: it falls in the afternoon in the UK and Europe, and in the morning across North America. Treat that moment as the real cut-off for anything booked, filed or entered on a Korean site.

Why does my phone show a different Korean time than this page?
Almost always a device setting. This page takes the moment from your own device clock and converts it with the time-zone database, so if automatic date and time is switched off, or your phone has not yet picked up a Korean network after landing, the phone's own display can lag while this page still converts correctly. If both look wrong together, the device clock itself has drifted — switching automatic time back on resets it.