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Pyongyang’s Mysterious Ryugyong Hotel
By Nick on September 22, 2008
Before I learned about 3D building layers in Google Earth, all you could see of the Ryugyong Hotel in the North Korean capital was a long, looming shadow. The shape of the building makes it difficult to make out when looking down from space, and I wondered if it had been censored by Google. After all, this isn’t any ordinary hotel – the Ryugyong goes by many names, including the “Hotel of Doom,” “Phantom Hotel,” and “Phantom Pyramid.”
Why the gloomy names?
From what I understand, the hotel was built to boost national pride and attract western investment. Its towering 105 stories would have made it the world’s tallest hotel, and even today the 330m structure is still one of the world’s tallest, bettering even Japan’s tallest building.
Huge sums of money were poured into the Ryugyong Hotel, and even before it was finished, it was put on maps and even postage stamps. Unfortunately, it never was finished. After 5 years of construction problems, funding dried up, and what could have been Pyongyang’s greatest pride became the city’s greatest embarrassment, an incomplete eyesore casting an ugly shadow over the city.
A new beginning?
It’s been over 20 years since construction work started on the Ryugyong, and most of that time it has just stood, without any windows, sagging under the weight of it’s own poor quality concrete. All this time, there has been a single crane perched on the top, possibly as a reminder that the building needs finishing.
Now that time has come. Details are sketchy, but it appears that an Egyptian company has started refurbishing the top floors, and one can only hope they continue all the way down, through 3,000 rooms, to the base of Pyongyang’s most prominent building.
Learn more about the Ryugyong Hotel
- Ryugyong Hotel in Wikipedia
- Damn Interesting’s article about the Ryugyong Hotel
- 3D model of the Ryugyong Hotel to import into Google Earth
- Ryugyong Hotel in Google Maps
Posted in Asia | 2 Comments
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2 Responses to “Pyongyang’s Mysterious Ryugyong Hotel”
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Mark Ramsay, globetrotting from an armchair in England.
6:40 pm on September 23rd, 2008
Hey! interesting, I thought I had done a post about Pyongyang in North Korea and it is a very a nice looking city in some parts and awful looking with so much destruction in other parts of the city it is a shame. But I did not anyway, Great post, Bro.
11:08 pm on September 23rd, 2008
Cheers Mark, I look forward to your post about Pyongyang, whenever that may be.