The Ryugyong Hotel or Yu-Kyung Hotel is an unfinished 105-story, 330-meter-tall pyramid-shaped skyscraper in Pyongyang, North Korea. Its name (“capital of willows”) is also one of the historical names for Pyongyang. The building is also known as the 105 Building, a reference to its number of floors. The building has been planned as a mixed-use development, which would include a hotel.
The Ryugyong Hotel is the most prominent feature of Pyongyang’s skyline and by far the tallest structure in North Korea. Construction of the Ryugyong Hotel was intended to be completed in time for the 80th birthday of General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and President Kim Il-Sung in 1992; if this had been achieved, it would have held the title of the world’s tallest hotel. Before Goldin Finance 117, it was considered the tallest unoccupied building in the world.
The building consists of three wings, each measuring 100 meters long, 18 meters wide, lightly stepped once but otherwise sloping at 75 degrees to the floor, which converges at a common point to form a pinnacle. The building is topped by a truncated cone 40 meters wide, consisting of eight floors that are intended to rotate, topped by a further six static floors. The structure was originally intended to house five revolving restaurants, and either 3,000 or 7,665 guest rooms, according to different sources. According to Orascom’s Khaled Bichara in 2009, the Ryugyong will not be just a hotel, but rather a mixed-use development, including “revolving restaurant” facilities along with a “mixture of hotel accommodation, apartments, and business facilities”.
The hotel has since been clad in metal and glass and was later fitted with LED lights to turn it into a colorful nighttime spectacle. Construction work has started and stopped many times, fueling constant speculation over whether it will ever open to guests.
The Ryugyong came back to life in 2018 when LEDs were installed on its facade, turning the building into Pyonyang’s biggest light show. A four-minute program shows North Korea’s history and a variety of political slogans, while the cone at the top projects a huge North Korean flag.
By May, an LED display had been added to one entire side of the structure, and there were reports that the building was being readied for occupation. By July, the LED display was showing animations and movie scenes. In June 2019, there was new signage bearing the hotel’s name (in Korean and English) and its logo over the main entrance.
Unfortunately, tourists can’t visit the Ryugyong Hotel yet. Neither can anyone else under normal circumstances as it’s still a construction site. However, the towering building is always in view across Pyongyang. On a tour, tourists won’t miss a snap of the exterior of this building.
According to Wikipedia
