Ryugyong Hotel – The Ugliest Building on Earth

Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang – The Hotel of Doom

First Published Date: June 14, 2015

The Republic of North Korea is simultaneously one of the most interesting and most impenetrable nations in the world. There are many places on this earth that provide major talking points with their seeming lack of openness, but as time has gone by there has continually been a temptation for each to accept the benefits of capitalism (or at least commercialism, which may not be the same thing but has many of the same effects) and open their doors, slowly at first but eventually deciding that they have more to gain from opening up to let the world in than from staying isolated. China was once seen in the way North Korea is today, but a move to free market capitalism is all but complete there and a real estate economy is developing. In North Korea, the same cannot be said – but whispers are emerging that it is beginning to dip its toe in the water.

The winds of change do not blow visibly in North Korea, due to the capricious nature of its President Kim Jong-Il, whose idiosyncratic style of leadership can best be described as “individual”. North Korea is a highly militarized state, and resists any effort to involve it in globalization. However, in Pyongyang there is a building which stands half-completed more than 20 years after ground was broken on its construction. Claims are that it will finally be completed in 2012, a quarter of a century after it began, and marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the former leader, and Kim Jong-Il’s father, Kim Il-Sung. Extensive information on the hotel is hard to come by, however, so we are left with second-guessing and often cynical predictions on what shape the construction activity might take.

North Korea has a total foreign media blackout, and limits overseas visitors quite sternly, so it is not possible for international organizations to get a close look at what is taking place on the site of the Ryugong Hotel. Five years after construction began, it is known that it had to be stalled due to a lack of funds to complete the project, so what exists of the hotel is a concrete skeleton. Lately, one side of the pyramid-structured hotel has been seen to be covered in glass (although even that has been attributed in some circles to Photoshop), and the upper floors (due to house restaurants) seem to have been completed. A lot more, however, remains to be done. Even the Egyptian construction group Orascom – involved in the recent building – has admitted that the extent of the confirmed work is more to give the facade a more attractive look.

Whether the 2012 completion date for the Ryugong hotel is mere fancy or not, the fact that construction has recommenced after all this time does make for interesting speculation. Will the Pyongyang authorities see work completed on the building, and permit the promised “Western” freedom within the walls of the hotel? Will we know if it happens or not, given the silence from North Korea on almost all issues? We could yet be surprised – and those who call the building the “Worst Construction In the World” may yet have cause to eat their words. And, of course, maybe not.