Flat-land capital legend-dated to Tan'gun's 1122 BCE
Pyongyang is North Korea's capital and largest city, with 3,255,288 people in the 2008 census on the Taedong River. Legend founds it in 1122 BCE at Tan'gun's capital site; the Sino-Korean name means flat land. An estimated 99% of residents are party members, candidates, or dependents.
Excavations in 1955 at Kumtan-ni uncovered a large prehistoric village from the Jeulmun and Mumun pottery periods. North Korea identifies the city with Asadal, the mythical first capital of Gojoseon, though historians point out that older Chinese texts describe a much later Joseon and suspect the link serves propaganda. Wanggeom-seong on this site was Gojoseon's capital from 194 BC until the Han conquest of 108 BC, after which Emperor Wu placed the seat of Lelang Commandery here, until Goguryeo destroyed it in 313.
Goguryeo moved its own capital here in 427; Christopher Beckwith reconstructs their name for it as Piarna, level land. After 668 the Tang ran it as the seat of a protectorate, and by 676 Silla held it, but it lay abandoned on a frontier until Wang Geon revived it as Goryeo's Western Capital. Japanese troops seized it in the Imjin War, and Qing forces later occupied it for a time.
Missionaries called it the Jerusalem of the East: by 1880 it reportedly had over a hundred churches, and the revival of 1907 cemented that reputation. About 40,000 people lived here in 1890 before a battle in the First Sino-Japanese War wrecked much of the city. It became capital of South Pyongan in 1896, and under Japanese rule, as Heijo, it saw the March First Movement of 1919 and anti-Chinese riots in 1931; by 1938 it held 235,000 people.
The Soviet 25th Army marched in on 25 August 1945, and the city became North Korea's capital in 1948. South Korean troops held it from 19 October to 6 December 1950. Reconstruction plans were shown in an air-raid shelter beneath Moranbong during the fighting. Recent building includes 2,784 flats on Changjon Street in 2012 and 4,804 in the Ryomyong Street complex in 2017, and the 2008 census counted over 3.2 million residents.
Source: Pyongyang
