It is a few metres higher than the Eiffel Tower and its history is quite complicated: no one has ever been able to finish its construction. So, if it could have been the tallest hotel building in the world, the Ryugyong Hotel, that’s its name, has become the hotel that never had a single guest.
The “HOTEL OF MISFORTUNE”: it has never had a guest in 30 years
# More than 3000 people capacity, but 0 guests
Ryugyong hotel
The pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel is 330 metres high and has 105 floors. With 5 panoramic restaurants and various observation platforms, it should have been a hotel that would have welcomed 3,000 people, instead it hosted zero. The building reminds a mountain, symbol of the birth of the emperor of the time Kim-II-Sung. North Korean people call it the “hotel of misfortune”, because its construction began more than 30 years ago and hasn’t ended yet, actually people wonder if they could see this hotel finished.
# They started building it in 1987
interno Ryugyong hotel
While in South Korea in the middle of the Cold War, in 1988, there were the Summer Olympics, the World Youth and Student Festival to celebrate the Soviet propaganda was held in the North. In order to accommodate people who would come to these events, in North Korea, the year before, it was decided to build a large hotel. Thanks to Soviet funds, the Ryugyong Hotel began to be build, but it was not completed by the Festival. The works were postponed and the hotel remained a pyramid-shaped concrete block.
It’s at that time that the long history of the building began. The USSR collapsed and the funds disappeared, leaving the hotel unfinished until 2008, when an Egyptian company decided to continue the work, by adding the glass panels around the perimeter. The building was abandoned ones again until 2012, when a German company was supposed to take over the hotel. Due to political differences, the arrangements weren’t successful and the Ryugyong Hotel remained incomplete. What is surprising is that the interior has always been empty and dusty, nobody began to furnish it.
# The hotel in North Korea’s propaganda campaign
Ryugyong hotel
The hotel would have been the tallest building on the Korean peninsul, making the North Korean government more proud. However it hasn’t happened and the North Korean government decided to delete the Ryugyong Hotel from the maps of the Capital, given to the fact that its construction has never been completed. Unfortunately hiding a building of 330 meters high is not so easy, so the government decided to make it a new means of propaganda. Since 2018, LED lights projecting shows have appeared on the facade, where also historical programs on the Nation, political slogans and images of missiles are cast. The latest floors instead propose a huge North Korean flag.
BEATRICE BARAZZETTI
