The Ryugyong Hotel - Pyongyang Like You've Never Seen It Before

Towering above Pyongyang is The Ryugyong Hotel, a vast concrete construction that was never completed due to lack of investment, sitting as a monument to the idiocy of the country's regime and representing 3.9 million square feet of wasted space and wasted money. The poor quality concrete has decayed so far that it's become unsafe. If it had been completed, it would have been the tallest hotel in the world. Have a read of the Wikipedia article for some background info...http://en.wikipedia..../Ryugyong_HotelNow have a look at this video, a creative look at an alternative reality for the city, with nuclear weapons sitting side by side with the people... I just found it interesting and wanted to post it...

www.geocities.com/dprk02/intro.htm

This is a good link to show the situation in North Korea, if you visit it as a tourist.

All in English, with some good pictures and comments.

At that time, there were many unfinished projects also in Bangkok, not only in Pyongyang.

Now, Pyongyang has other operating hotels already - like the

http://en.wikipedia....Yanggakdo_Hotel

About the unfinished hotel project Ryugyong, it must be removed, at least the upper part of it, the costs are huge, however...so nothing is happening so far.

It should be noticed, that this is the only hotel-project on hold in Pyongyang, as far as I have information, the other high-rise hotel buildings are already finished and operating, like the Koryo Hotel 1+2, the Chongnyon Hotel, the Sosan Hotel and the Changgwangsan Hotel Towers 1+2.

Pyongyang is now a city of about 3 million people and cannot function without any hotel accomodation at all, despite the whole nation is running on low economic level.

Intersting article on the Ryugyong in Esquire magazine...

'The worst building in the history of Mankind'

It's the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea, where the world's 22nd largest skyscraper has been vacant for two decades and is likely to stay that way ... forever...
http://www.esquire.com/the-side/DESIGN/wor...tel-ever-012808

Also, check out http://ryugyong.org/

Is it possible this hotel might actually get completed and open to guests?... and if so, would you stay there, knowing about the 'suspect concrete'?... It looks like it might actually happen...

For sure I would go.....and would love to stay in that hotel.

There are hundreds of hotels in South East Asia built with dodgy concrete mixes. There are hundreds of half built hotels around the region waiting for further funding.

North Korea is in my top 3 wishlist of places to visit.

Wow, that would be a fascinating place to go. I wish them well and hope their hotel goes up.

That BBC report was outstandingly biased...."hotel of Doom", "the worst building in history"....lot of tosh. To me it looks like half the hotels going up in Dubai at the moment.

I think they get a bad press and many of their problems come from embargo's and sanctions put in place by countries still p*ssed off over the Korea War.

Is it available on Agoda yet?

I'd sure stay there too. I'd love to visit that country, if only to see those super hot traffic wardens...
http://www.orientexp...ardens-of-asia/