The Arrow and the Sun: A Topo-mythanalysis of Pyongyang

Abstract

As the capital of the DPRK, Pyongyang fascinates with its socialist architecture and planned urbanism where propaganda and ideology are set as a mise en scène landscape. I propose a reading of this city from a symbolic point of view, trying to find behind the actual topography the ideological myth written by the regime since 1945. This concrete-and-marble-made narrative was built gradually. After a diachronic description of key sites, I locate topologic and symbolic structures that enable a "topo-mythanalysis," or analysis of the imaginary ("imaginaire" in French) providing the framework for the (re)construction of Pyongyang. We find a historical axis which rotates slowly during the 1970s and 80s around a center corresponding to Mansu Hill and its Grand Monument, becoming eventually a new "axis of destiny," or arrow, to the glory of Kim Il Sung's personal myth. The "ideological polygon" found in the center of the city works as a rotating sun in an exclusively diurnal imaginary.

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