Talk:Pyongyang

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Why is it written P'yongyang, not Pyongyang or Pyeongyang? Is it according to the official romanization of NK? I guess we need to set some rules about how to name and write korean entries in alphabet. My suggestion is to use the official S. Korean romanization. We can discuss this issue in Wikipedia Talk:Wikipedians/South Korea or should we open a talk page for this. soax

There is a complete lack of logic in using the southern system for the Romanization of northern words. The two Koreas have distinctly different Romanization systems. Using the southern system for northern words is not only inaccurate and sloppy – it’s lazy. They have a system that works, why would it not be used here?


Every Single Map I ahve ever seen Puts P'yongyang so leave it on this page.

I guess it's safe to follow how south korean government write the name. In www.korea.net you can easily find that that name is written as Pyongyang, not P'y^ongyang. P'y^ongyang is the transcription according to the older SK standard, I guess. But the SK standard changed a few years and foreign media haven't had time and energy to changed the false romanization. And for me, a korean, these "^o" is neither comfortable nor clear. It's important for wikipedia to follow the usage of majority, but it's also important to provide new and correct standard to the majority. (And I've written something about this theme in NK map talk page, too.) soax 18:27 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

Very well if someone explains why its wrong and I myself know that i know nothing really about the subject enough, i wil accept it. - fonzy

The different romanisations used in the two Koreas as well as wikipedia conventions regarding them are explained in the Naming Conventions link above. There is no "true" or "false" romanisation, by the way—there are two official standards at the moment, and no single romanisation scheme could ever be the absolute, true solution. The name is written P'yŏngyang according to the North Korean version of the McCune-Reischauer romanisation, so that is the headline, with the South Korean romanisation (Pyeongyang) in parentheses. The form Pyongyang without the diacritics, which has near universal currency in English, is where the page is located. I find nothing wrong with that. English often simplifies forms that contain diacritical marks, and most of the time it's silly fussing about those. See for example L'viv, for which the most common English name is Lviv (without the apostrophe). --Iceager 11:29, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Pyongchang shouldn't redirect here....Pyongchang is in South Korea, it's a different city. Adam Bishop 23:26 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] From Dictionary.com, there is no '

Pyongyang

n : capital of North Korea and an industrial center; "Pyongyang is Korea's oldest city but little of its history has been preserved"

It's because ㅍ can be romanized as p' if you use the McCune-Reischauer romanization or as p if you use the revised romanization. Today the revised version is recommended. --TonyM ｷﾀ━( °∀° )━ｯ!! 17:40, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 樂浪 district

I've seen map(s?) of Pyongyang that label 樂浪 as "Rangnang": [1] [2]

And two pages that mark its Hangul as 낙랑, not 락랑: [3] [4]

(Sorry in all of the pages you do have to wade through the rest of the place names / the rest of the text a bit to find it)

And surely enough 낙랑 would end up being pronounced as Rangnang after you shift the r/n and nasalise the ㄱ. Do people think that is actually correct and what we have on the page is wrong? We have Rakrang-guyŏk (락랑구역; 樂浪區域) at the moment. - KittySaturn 05:17, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your suggestion or question was. Do you mean the article should say Rangnang instead of Rakrang? I agree that I'd like to see some sources on the Rakrang pronunciation, and for Amrokkang, while we're at it. I have had a look into SEM'S Reference Grammar of Korean, but I haven't yet found any references on Standard North Korean pronunciation of -ㄱㄹ- and -ㅂㄹ-. The Yale romanisation table says -ngn- and -mn-, but I guess the table simply leaves remarks about NK pronunciation to other sections. – Wikipeditor 13:49, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
P.S. Could it even be Rangrang? Looking at 독립 tongrip, anything seems possible.

Rangrang confirmed. Wikipeditor

[edit] Cars

I have reworded the section that claimed that there were no private cars... it's simply not true. Go and have a look, or actually, simply look at the picture already in the article. Wikipedia should not confuse propaganda with facts. Metro0 23:30, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... Just because cars can be seen, does that mean they are privately owned? One thing would be to say there WHERE no cars, but how can be substansiate that there are no PRIVATE cars? --Konstantin 15:42, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

is it me, or are the external links totally out of place for an encyclopedia entry? one of them talks about how to get male prostitutes in its "night life" section and another is some lame soccer team's trip pictures...half of which are, well, them playing soccer.

welcome to Wikipedia...so much more than an encyclopedia... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.70.86.163 (talk) 08:45, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image

God, that image is awful. Even at full resolution, it's hard to see anything. Can anybody find something better? Please? -- Visviva 04:06, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article moved to Pyeongyang

It seems that the DPRK spells it Pyongyang, (as well as being the most common representation I've seen in English), so it should probably be moved back. Also, it looks like this has been discussed before an the consensus was for Pyongyang.

The state-run news agency KCNA always spells it Pyongyang as far as I can see. You can search KCNA archives to verify this. --Alexxx1 (talk/contribs) 12:39, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Name

Can people make up their mind and clean up the mix of Phyŏngyang, Phyongyang and P'yŏngyang? If “P. Directly Governed City” is the name's translation into English, shouldn't it contain the English form (Pyongyang)? Is it spelled “Phyŏngyang Directly Governed City” in an English-language source from North Korea? Wikipeditor 17:25, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The user who edited the names to be "Phyongyang", saying that it is "in accordance with North Korean standard romanization", is wrong. Pyongyang is never spelt "Phyongyang", as an exception to the ㅍ = Ph rule. All official sources write "Pyongyang" only. There is therefore no reason to use either Phyŏngyang or Phyongyang. -- 203.88.224.196 06:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Would anybody oppose a move from (now) P'yŏngyang back to Pyongyang? Wikipeditor 12:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Not I. For one thing, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Korean) specifies that we should use the title without diacritics or apostrophes (although that's something of an anachronism). For another, North Korea itself (or at least KCNA) uses "Pyongyang" and not "P'yŏngyang." -- Visviva 13:41, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree, move it back to Pyongyang. Bsheppard 18:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC) ;)

Done. Wikipeditor 09:43, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pyongyang Chronicles

I removed the Pyongyang Chronicles link from the External Links section since there hardly seems to be any true proof that it's a legitimate news website (it doesn't even cover the recent nuclear test) and it was added by an anonymous contributor who seems to vandalize. I've done some web searching in trying to determine any legitimacy to the site and I haven't come up with much. I've started this discussion in case anyone disagrees. Ando228 21:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It's clearly a joke, but a lot of people seem to be taken in by it. It's likely to be added to External Links again in the future, and we should just remove it again. --Reuben 20:40, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Heijo

Why does Heijo redirect here? The word does not exist in the article except for the notice. --Golbez 09:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

It's under "historic names": During the Japanese occupation, it was also known as Heijō, which is simply the Japanese reading of the Chinese characters 平壌 the name Pyongyang consists of. --Reuben 19:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Durr, I was searching for "Heijo", not with a macron. Thanks. --Golbez 13:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC

[edit] Population

Just wanted to inform you that, according to the German Wikipedia, Pyongyang has 3.871.335 inhabitants as of January 1st, 2007. Source is given on the German article page. I know that all the numbers of inhabitants are only numbers that come directly from the North Korean government which don't have to be the right ones. Though, the value from the year 1993 is neither "confirmed" and very, very outdated.

toben