First Look: Twenty Years Later, Construction Is Still Happening On North Korea’s Ryugyong Hotel Skyscraper

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First Look: Twenty Years Later, Construction Is Still Happening On North Korea’s Ryugyong Hotel Skyscraper

October 1, 2012

North Korea’s Ryugyong Hotel was originally scheduled to open in 1989 as a response to Singapore’s Westin Stamford Hotel, then the tallest hotel in the world. But the project spent decades mired in construction deadlocks. Building eventually resumed in 2008 after nearly 16 years of inactivity, with officials announcing a completion date set for 2012. Well, that deadline has come and gone, and while the building might not be finished, photographs of the interior of the building have begun to leak across the internet for the first time ever. Read more.

The Beijing-based group Koryo Tours, which specializes in tourism to North Korea, has released the first images of the Ryugyong Hotel’s sparse interiors. Up until now it was anybody’s guess as to what the pyramid-shaped structure actually held. The answer? Two words: concrete wasteland. The exterior of the hotel, which stands at 105 stories, appears to be almost completed, but the interior is lacking almost all of the details and features that would make it a preeminent hotel destination. Sources at the site suggest another two or three years before completion, upon which the hotel will house the “country’s premier restaurants, hotel accommodation, apartments, and business facilities.”