Ryugyong Hotel
Thursday, 23rd February 2006 by Alex Turnbull
This is the striking (and huge) Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. It's a 330-metre-tall pyramid-shaped building with 3,000 rooms, and was supposed to have 7 revolving restaurants, except they never actually finished it.
newspapers estimated the cost of construction was $750 million - 2% of North Korea's GDP - and it is generally assumed construction came to a halt in 1992 due to lack of funding, acute electricity shortages, and the prevailing famine.
The building itself is complete, however it has no windows, fixtures or fittings - which makes it officially the world's Tallest Unoccupied Building! In fact, it's the tallest building by far in North Korea, the 18th tallest building in the entire world, and if it were ever to be completed, would be the world's tallest hotel. Here's a picture which really gives you a great impression of scale.
Thanks to Keith T, Soren Ragsdale, Josh Weinberg, zmaster and Jon Gaspar.
yet the people are so poor.
i think the theory was that having asia’s tallest hotel would bring in tourist dollars.
course, that money would probably go to one of kim jong il’s sexy parties.
OMFG, this is ugly.
“I’m so ronery … so ronery … so ronery and sadry arone.”
Thank you MrWhipple – I can’t read those words without laughing 😀
Not only is in uninhabited, but it can never be – the concrete is too poor quality.
They even abandoned the crane on top of it. It looks eerie to me. Maybe they should use it as the next headquarters for Dr. Evil. 🙂
tis true. would be an awesome film location.
A graffiti-artist-dream come true… 🙂
Has anybody ever really been to this country? I don’t think so. I’m begining to question the very existance of North Korea.
Check out the blog entries for this guy’s North Korean holiday: http://www.blogjam.com/north-korea/
Makes for a pretty amusing read. Apparently people on the street pretend to not know where Ryugyong is – even tho its visible just just about everywhere in Pyongyang!
There aren’t any people on the streets of Pyongyang, nor are there more than a few lonely cars. What a sad and eerie place this city must be.
Great link there Russ, that was a cool blog of Pyon’yang
¿What’s the dome north-east from the “hotel”?
what a big waste of money
A Russian site with photos on North Korea (in English):
http://www.enlight.ru/camera/dprk/index_e.html
Nice to see a different perspective on the country to the average negative Western media outlook. Although there are no photos of the hotel mentioned.
I love this building, it is gorgeous!!!!!!! Would be better if they put the BLUE glass on they were originally planning. It should go CONDO, I am there!!!!!!!!!
this hotel is so cool and i just cant believe that it is 3000 rooms and is that big. It is really the most amazing thing i have ever seen in a hotel
I don’t think that korean’s life is boring,they have 2nd big stadium in Pyongyang ,it can contains 200000 person!And I live in China. You know, the biggest stadium in China only can contains 90000 person!
Having studied north Korea for several years now, I must say that the hotel is by far one of the most unusual undertakings in the country by bar. Due to north Korea’s attitude towards the limiting of tourism, it doesn’t make sense for them to spend that much money on a hotel that probably wouldn’t even break even with the amount of people who would stay there. North Korea doesn’t generally spend that much money on the civilian sector of thier society. And I must admit, the vacancy and halted construction coupled with the crane just left on the top of the structure do present an eerie feeling.
Looks like a space ship there is a plan for that thing and it is not a hotel…
The “dome” is an ice rink if I’m not mistaken. Here is a good site documenting other North Korean buildings via satellite: http://www.rioleo.org/pyongyang-northkorea.php
It’s a shame that this enormous amount of money has been spent on this project – only to never make the money back from tourism. Such a waste
I personally think the building is hideous. But for some strange reason I am absolutely fascinated by it. It’s so incredibly eerie. Like a bad car wreck, you don’t want to, but you just have to look at it.
now its officially uninhabitable. concrete quality is too poor
some websites say that it’s on-hold and may actually finish building the hotel. but I think that’ll never happen
Looks like a great place to base jump!
I hope that it gets finished, I read in wiki (which is just speculation) that consstruction resumed in April of 08. who really knows though. If I was Bill Gates I would finished the hotel just because I could. $$$$$$$$$$$$
construction on Ryugyong hotel has resumed after 16 years!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080717/lf_nm_life/korea_north_hotel_dc;_ylt=AvXwAmLUDz6APXH4ym96wh4DW7oF
There is a rush of new pyramid building works, some finished and some on the drawing boards. Check out redpill8.blogspot for the latest a couple of the latest mega pyramids — plus some wonderful videos about the Ryunyong Hotel.