This review is on the building and sculptures around it. For details of my internal visit see my separate review – Visit Chairman Mao Zedong.
The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall or Mao’s Mausoleum is located at the southern end of Tiananmen Square between the Monument to the People’ s Heroes and Zhengyangmen Gate. Continue reading “Chairman Mao Memorial Hall”
Personally I think this is one of the most beautiful buildings in North Korea.
Pyongyang’s first railway station was built in 1920 but was destroyed in the Korean War. While the current three story (plus basement) building, built in 1958, is classified as socialist style architecture it is far from the boxy 1950s Soviet type buildings more commonly built in Pyongyang after the Korean War. Continue reading “Pyongyang Railway Station”
By the end of the Korean War (1953) Kim Il-sung had had enough of foreign imperialist intervention in the affairs of Korea. He had, with more than a little help from the Soviet Union, something, which now seems to have been forgotten about, managed to stem Japanese Imperialism and remove them from Korea in 1945. In 1953 he had defeated the United States in the Fatherland Liberation War (to outsiders the Korean War) though the US continued to occupy the southern part of the country as it does to this day. Continue reading “The Tower of the Juche Idea”
In my Chollima Statue review I explained how Kim Il-sung was keen that the redevelopment of North Korea, after the devastating impact of the Korean War, occur as quickly as possible and in 1956 he first urged his people to “rush at the speed of Chollima.”
This is one of Pyongyang’s older modern age monuments having being built in 1947 (refurbished 1985). It stands at a height of 30 metres on Moran Hill close to the large bronze statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il (Mansudae Grand Monument) – the location from which I saw it. Continue reading “Liberation Tower”
The Rambling Wombat 