Inside North Korea's Abandoned Ryugyong Hotel: The 'Hotel of Doom'

The Ryugyong Hotel: A Decades-Long Mystery

• 🇰🇵 The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, is a colossal, unfinished skyscraper, often dubbed the 'Hotel of Doom'.
• 💡 It has loomed over the city for decades, with construction beginning in 1987, yet it has never opened to guests.
• 🚶 Simon Cockerell, one of the few Westerners to enter, describes the interior as alienatingly high and fascinating, offering a unique view of the city.

Design and Construction of a Monumental Structure

• 🏗️ Designed to be the world's tallest hotel, its genesis was a competition with Singapore's Stanford Hotel, aiming to showcase North Korea's prowess.
• 🧱 Unlike most skyscrapers, the Ryugyong Hotel is constructed entirely from reinforced concrete, a common material in North Korea due to historical technology transfer from East German engineers.
• ⛰️ The building's pyramidal shape, resembling a mountain (a symbol of power), features a wide base and tapers upwards to manage the immense weight of the concrete structure.

Unfinished Ambitions and Future Speculation

• 📉 Construction halted in the early '90s due to economic hardship and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, leading to the 'arduous march' famine.
• 💡 Although the exterior was completed by 2008 and a grand opening planned for 2013, it never materialized.
• 🎰 Recent rumors suggest the hotel might be repurposed as a casino, contingent on foreign investment, though legal and demand issues make this uncertain.
• 🌍 Despite limited foreign investment options and ongoing economic challenges, the hotel is unlikely to be demolished due to its massive scale and embodied carbon.

North Korea's Evolving Tourism Landscape

• ✈️ While North Korea's borders remain largely closed, the nation appears to be preparing for potential visitors, evidenced by the development of the Wonsan-Kalma Holiday Resort.
• ❓ The target audience and future plans for both the resort and the Ryugyong Hotel remain unclear, reflecting North Korea's unpredictable and closed nature.
• 📸 The Ryugyong Hotel, once a complete mystery, is now slightly less so thanks to rare interior documentation, though its ultimate fate is still unknown.