When you have an ego the size of Mt Etna and the ambition to flatten out the Great Wall, then you end up doing things which people will take notice of, and shake their head in pity. As if North Korea needed reasons to be in the black book of attention, the latest talk is about the world’s largest abandoned building. Christened as the ‘Hotel of Doom’, construction on the 105-story Ryugyong Hotel started in 1987. It was overseen by the regime of Kim Il-Sung—the current dictator’s grandfather—the hotel was seen as a rib at South Korea for winning the 1988 Olympic Games. In 1992, work stopped when the Soviet Union collapsed. Then in2008 Egypt’s Orascom took up the project and added the glass façade and an antenna at the top. In 2012, Kempinski showed an interest, but after a journalist leaked a report on its pathetic conditions inside, the hotel group coincidentally announced disinterest.
So there remains this mammoth building, towering over the box-type buildings structures of Pyongyang, North Korea, 1,083 feet high and ignored even by swat-worthy flies. In an estimation conducted in 2008, South Korea says the Ryugyong Hotel will need $2 billion to ‘finish construction and ensure safety’. That is 7pc of North Korea’s GDP. In normal economic circumstances, this might be dropped in a snap, but North Korea likes to swim against the tide. So.
[ Via : Elledecor ]
