Talk:Pyongyang

About that north-south, east-west grid

In § Cityscape:

The streets are laid out in a north–south, east–west grid, giving the city an orderly appearance.

This cites a Library of Congress country study from 2009 (actually I believe it's this one from 2008 – same book (5th ed.), different scan, different URL). I had a look at satellite photos of Pyongyang on Google Maps, and I have to ask – are they though?

From what I could see, only the area on the north side of the river between Pyongyang Station and Pyongyang Thermal Power Plant, and then on the east side of the river surrounding Juche Tower and the Party founding monument, are on what could be described as a roughly north-south–aligned grid. Much of the rest of the city is rather more disordered, with diagonal grids, grids orthogonal to whatever major road, railway or river delimits them, or wholly organically arranged. The spaces in those grid squares themselves are also often disordered. The wording implies a somewhat uniform grid like in Beijing or Los Angeles, covering a majority of the city, but that's just not the case here. The "orderly appearance" thing also sounds a bit propaganda-like; MOS:FLOWERY? – oatco (talk) 00:51, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe the Library of Congress puts out North Korean propaganda.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:54, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

You're right, they probably don't, but my point otherwise stands – only some of the streets are laid in an approximately north-south grid, and the orderliness of its appearance is still a point-of-view thing. – oatco (talk) 16:12, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Is it Pyongyang or Pyeongyang?

If it's Pyongyang pretty consistently, why are there so many "Pyongyang"? 170.82.111.255 (talk) 12:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Pyongyang is the standard spelling which is why we use it.--Jack Upland (talk) 00:08, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

About sourcing of the estimated numbers of inhabitants that are members of the WPK

In the initial section you can see the sentence "It is estimated that 99% of those living in Pyongyang are members, candidate members, or dependents of members of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK)." It is unsourced and I could not find it anywhere. Estimated by who? ~2026-40162-83 (talk) 11:33, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

The first section of Wikipedia articles (called the "lead") is often mostly unsourced because of WP:LEADCITE; in short, if some information is uncontroversial in the first section, as long as it appears in the rest of the article and it's sourced there, it doesn't need to be sourced in the lead.

Hence, the info is sourced in the body. See second sentence here: Pyongyang#Demographics grapesurgeon (talk) 13:10, 16 July 2026 (UTC)