The city
Superficially, the city plan for Pyongyang is somewhat similar to the 1935 General Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow: broad streets, elegantly laid-out pedestrian promenades along the riverbanks, and the Palace of the Soviets prominently positioned with Lenin Hill on its axis. It's plausible that some elements of this plan were copied in the design for Pyongyang.
The group of twenty to thirty architects and urban designers who worked on the reconstruction of the capital were all educated outside Korea, either in the Soviet Union or in communist countries in the West. In rebuilding the country they also received technical and material assistance from these friendly communist states. What's immediately striking when you enter Pyongyang are the big monumental axes and vistas. Benefiting to the full from the city's geographical setting in undulating landscape bisected by a river, the urban planners and architects have made Pyongyang a remarkable work of art. You have an unobstructed view from one monument to the next, kilometres away on the other side of the river. Some scale is of course needed to make such gestures effective. That's why the monuments are of giant proportions and, for the sake of composition, are flanked by a number of symmetrically positioned towers.

Most of the monuments date from the 1970s, 80s and early 90s. A random list: the Mansudee Grand Monument with the twenty-metre-high statue of the Great Leader to mark the sixtieth birthday of Kim Il Sung; the 170-metre-tall Juche Monument to mark the seventieth birthday of the Great Leader; a street (Tongil) lined by 290 blocks of flats each 13 floors high to mark his eightieth birthday; and in 1995 the fifty-metre-tall monument with sickle (farmer), hammer (worker) and pen (intellectual), representing the people called upon to support the revolution, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Korean Workers' Party. The memory of the Korean people's struggle for independence and the heroic battle against the imperialists is kept alive with impressive monuments such as the Memorial for the Fallen of the Revolution (1975, extended in 1985) and the monument for the Fatherland Liberation War (1993). In designing these monuments, architects and urban designers worked closely with artists from the Institute for Revolutionary Painters and Sculptors.

In addition to these structures, there are numerous monumental buildings occupying prominent sites, many of them overlooking big squares. In general, these buildings are modern in design. Even the occasional building that looks traditional has been built using modern techniques and materials (i.e. concrete).
A certain parallel can be drawn between the monumental buildings and the Juche Idea, though not with the master plan for Pyongyang. The function of these buildings, almost without exception, is permanent education. According to the Juche Idea, man differs from animals in his capacity to develop. The destiny of man, therefore, is in his own hands. What matters is the goal that man sets himself and the way he hopes to achieve it. "The basic mission of the philosophical outlook in the world lies in clarifying the path to carve out the destiny of man," according to the Great General, son of the Great Leader and current president of North Korea, Kim Jong Il. That destiny of man is to lead a happy life, free from oppression and exploitation. Besides museums devoted to the lives of Kim senior and junior and the Korean War, and the theatres and filmhouses showing performances whose leitmotif is national pride, every city of any size has its own children's palace. To these palaces, easily comparable with real palaces in size and grandeur, youths can come after school to learn how to play musical instruments, sing, dance, embroider and more besides.
Pyongyang's adults can undertake self-study in the Grand People's Study House (1982). This is a 100,000 square-metre library with reading rooms and lecture theatres where no fewer than 12,000 people a day can enrich themselves with knowledge. This building is situated on Kim Il Sung Square, one of the most important squares in the city. Visible to its east is the Juche Monument, to the north the statue of the Great Leader.

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