Mystery of North Korea's tallest abandoned hotel

Construction of the hotel began in 1987 and has been stopped and restarted several times since. One side of the 329m-high building is equipped with an LED screen used for light shows during major events in North Korea.

Bí ẩn khách sạn cao nhất Triều Tiên bỏ hoang- Ảnh 1. — Ryugyong Hotel, the tallest in North Korea

The world calls this the "Hotel of Doom" with 105 floors, also the tallest building in North Korea but has never had a single guest stay. Construction began nearly 40 years ago and is still not finished, the cost of completing the building is estimated at about 5% of the country's total GDP.

The Ryugyong Hotel remains a subject of worldwide fascination. The story behind the abandoned skyscraper that dominates the skyline of Pyongyang is often shrouded in mystery.

The hotel reached its full height in 1992, but the interior was never completed.

Bí ẩn khách sạn cao nhất Triều Tiên bỏ hoang- Ảnh 2. — Outside the building. To this day, it has never welcomed a single visitor.

Although rarely open to foreign tourists, North Korea still has a number of hotels operating in Pyongyang. Until the Ryugyong Hotel was completed, the Yanggakdo International Hotel was the city's largest hotel and the Ryanggang Hotel was considered its most luxurious.

The pyramid shape of the Ryugyong Hotel dominates the Pyongyang skyline for miles.

Each of the building's three sections, joined at the top, is 100m long, according to Atlas Obscura .

At the very top of the building, an eight-story cone that was supposed to house rotating restaurants, remains empty, like the rest of the hotel.

More exterior work began on the hotel in 2008 with the installation of glass panels across the entire wall surface.

An Egyptian contractor, Orascom Group, took over the project and resumed construction in 2008, according to Reuters. That year, citing South Korean media, it was estimated that the Ryugyong Hotel would cost about $2 billion to complete. According to the latest data from the World Factbook, North Korea's gross domestic product is about $40 billion. That would make the cost of completing the building about 5 percent of the country's total GDP.

Bí ẩn khách sạn cao nhất Triều Tiên bỏ hoang- Ảnh 3. — Hotel photo taken in 2008

Meanwhile, North Korea has found other uses for the building. Pyongyang celebrated International Workers' Day in 2009 with a fireworks display around the Ryugyong Hotel.

The hotel serves as a dramatic backdrop for performances by art troupes, made up of more than 100,000 LED screens.

Bí ẩn khách sạn cao nhất Triều Tiên bỏ hoang- Ảnh 4. — Hotel images 2018

In 2018, lighting designer Kim Yong Il created a light show featuring political slogans and party symbols that was projected onto the building's surface for several hours each night.

The building itself still lacks power and has no expected completion date, but there have been new signs of construction progress.

Alek Sigley, an Australian student studying a master's degree in Korean literature at Kim Il Sung University, posted online about the new sign above the hotel's main entrance in June 2019. A month later, Sigley was detained for a week and released after North Korean authorities accused him of "espionage" against the state. The student was then expelled from the country.