5th
My Weird Obsession with Ryugyong Hotel
Here’s a little cool fact / social studies lesson for the day.
One of my dreams is to visit Pyongyang, North Korea one day. My roommate’s sister got to go through a program aimed to help foster diplomacy through the two countries, and she brought back some really interesting stories, as well as some propaganda materials similar to the ones used in North Korean schools.
Probably the coolest thing about Pyongyang is the 105-story, 1,083 foot tall Ryugyong Hotel, a project that was started in 1987 with the goal of launching a month before I was born, in August of 1989.
Here’s Ryugyong during the 16 years of inactivity:
Instead, after the main structure was completed, the project was abandoned, with no fixtures or even windows installed on the hotel. It remained like this until recently, when window installation began, although the structural integrity of the hotel is questionable at best.
I’ve always found abandoned buildings interesting, and considering that this 105-story monstrosity is both the 24th largest building in the world and easily the largest abandoned building, and also the most prominent feature of the capital city of one of the last reclusive countries in the world, that’s freaking cool.
Here’s a more recent picture, during window installation:
