From the moment Japanese artillery fired across the city walls and routed nearly a thousand years of the Asian status quo, Pyongyang was irreversibly changed. First went the name - though the characters remained, it was now called 'Heijo'. Then went the dirt roads, as Heijo became a railway hub connecting north to south and beyond. Buildings, power plants, waterways, electricity, everything a modern city needed (and the colonial administration required to maintain their rule). But the last thing to go - the culture of the people - persisted. It persisted through missionary efforts, through name changes, through language destruction, through the suppression of the May 1st movement. Korea clung stubbornly to her first city.

That light is slowly dimming. With most schoolchildren having been taught in Japanese their whole life, the urban population are beginning to forget their city's old name. In the year 1962, as cars trundle through the narrow streets adorned with signs in kanji and kana, and the night sky is pierced by modern, glass and concrete buildings striking from in between crowded apartments, the past blurs further and further beyond grasp.