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What’s Up With the Title?

The title is also the name of the city where Guy lives out his stay in North Korea. Pyongyang literally means “flat land,” and it is the capital city of North Korea.

Guy Delisle describes it as a “phantom city in a hermit nation” (2.40). It’s actually pretty clean, but “too clean, in fact” (2.43). We analyze Pyongyang (the book and the city) more in our “Setting” section.