That’s what Esquire is calling the uncompleted Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang.
A picture doesn’t lie — the one-hundred-and-five-story Ryugyong Hotel is hideous, dominating the Pyongyang skyline like some twisted North Korean version of Cinderella’s castle. Not that you would be able to tell from the official government photos of the North Korean capital — the hotel is such an eyesore, the Communist regime routinely covers it up, airbrushing it to make it look like it’s open — or Photoshopping or cropping it out of pictures completely.
Even by Communist standards, the 3,000-room hotel is hideously ugly, a series of three gray 328-foot long concrete wings shaped into a steep pyramid. With 75 degree sides that rise to an apex of 1,083 feet, the Hotel of Doom (also known as the Phantom Hotel and the Phantom Pyramid) isn’t the just the worst designed building in the world — it’s the worst-built building, too. In 1987, Baikdoosan Architects and Engineers put its first shovel into the ground and more than twenty years later, after North Korea poured more than two percent of its gross domestic product to building this monster, the hotel remains unoccupied, unopened, and unfinished.
And this is how it looks today. “Death Star”, indeed.
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I just read that article from yahoo’s homepage. I like the Italian conception of the building: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEjqnTcdkXY
I think it looks cool.
It’s ‘Battlefield Earth’ bad. U-G-L-Y
Yes, it’s beginning to look like something excavated from a Mayan-like civilization. It’s thought provoking. Wonder if anyone is looking out those vacant doors and windows? Maybe there’s a whole group of overground outcasts creating a primitive society within.
Primitive society within? It’s a pretty primitive society outside the hotel. How much more primitive is there?
I like it! I would buy it if NK opens its economy!
It’s the world’s best monument to Confucian dynastic communism.
Yes #5, come to think of it. At least at Mayan lodgings you could get room service.
#6 Sorry, benkaiser, I’m guessing Donald has already beat you to the punch. I predict in 20 years there will be a large flashing sign on the top of the Death Star reading “Trump Tower XIX.”
North Korea has racked up quite a few “worst in the history of mankind” honors.
I’d bet my left hairy boy that the thing is crumbling.
Can anyone say Sampoong Department Store?
I’m sure it won’t last until any “re-unification”.
Put some trees and flower pots in those windows and let em grow. It’d make an awesome arboretum. You might warn the tourists to tread lightly.
Watch its demolition here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEjqnTcdkXY
It’s easy to look at an unfinished building and declare it ugly. The concept of the design is not that bad really, put some windows in it plus a some facing and elevators and you have something not quite bad. It is certainly better than the SamSung Securities Building in Jongak at any rate…
That was pretty funny. It looks like an overcaffeinated gorilla hitting the post button repeatedly.
How can North Korea have a hotel that has 3,000 rooms? They don’t get that many visitors from what I hear.
It’s like the Pyramids… A monument to a corrupt and cruel king, built on slave labor. ‘Course, it’s much too shoddily constructed to last another few thousand years (much less a couple hundred), so I doubt future generations will be able to fetishize it in quite the same way.
It’s like the Pyramids…
I’ve watched enough History Channel to know that you’re way off base here. The ancient Egyptians were proud to be constructing the Pyramids and they weren’t slave labor.
Oh, let’s not insult the Pharaohs quite so gratuitously:
“…In addition to the many theories as to the techniques involved, there are also disagreements as to the kind of workforce that was used. One theory, suggested by the Greeks, posits that slaves were forced to work until the pyramid was done. A more widely accepted theory in the modern era, however, suggests that the Great Pyramid of Egypt was built by hundreds of skilled workers who camped near the pyramids and worked for a salary or as a form of paying taxes until the construction was completed…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramid_construction_techniques
I have obviously been fed on a diet of lies and historical inaccuracy. I blame the Japanese.
(They’re all still gratuitiously ugly buildings, tho.)
#14,
You can’t put an elevator in it. One of its engineers now lives in South Korea. He/She (can’t remember) has said in interviews that they had been so rushed to complete it quickly that the workers made severe and irreparable mistakes, one being that the elevator shaft is too crooked to ever be able to install an elevator.
From what I heard, no floor is close to being level, causing plumbing and other problems as well. It is actually a powerful reminder to the citizens of Pyongyang that some obvious topics are permanently off-limits. I wonder how many people never actually think about it, or how many small children have innocently asked, “Omoni, who lives in that huge building over there?”
I kind of like it. Granted it’s not finished, but it’d probably look cool sheathed in glass and spotlights on it at night.
I idly wonder if and how it could safely be demolished, without coating the city in cheap-cement-dust…?
And what was done to the cheif engineers and builders?
So, other than uneven floors and crooked elevator shafts, what is the fundamental flaw which prevents further work on the building anyway? Even if it is uninhabitable, I would have expected the North to convert it into a huge billboard with slogans and pictures of the Kims.
Is it in danger of collapsing?
If it collapses, the intense emotional shock to the people could become a catalyst for deterioration of support for the KJI regime.
“And what was done to the cheif engineers and builders?”
The ones who haven’t escaped were probably executed there.
#26,
I’m sure they already have a press release ready for that in which they blame South Korean or American terrorists for the collapse.
It reminds me of “a lonely suppository.”
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Come on people, check your Star Wars trivia again, it’s obviously an Imperial Star Destroyer, not a Death Star. I rather like the comparisons elsewhere to the pyramidal Ministry buildings in 1984, too.
And by “people” I obviously mean the staff of Esquire.
Imagine the view from the top!
I bet you could see Yongbyeon
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