N. Korean hotel lit up with propaganda
World’s tallest empty building finds new life as canvas for massive political light show
PYONGYANG: The 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel has long been a blot on the Pyongyang skyline.
The world’s tallest unoccupied building has towered over North Korea’s capital since 1987, a grand but empty pyramid entirely dark except for the lone aircraft warning light at its top.
Outsiders saw the unfinished building as the epitome of failure, while people inside the country took care to rarely mention it at all.
That is, until light designer Kim Yong-il made the building once again the talk of the town.
In a brilliant flip of the script, the Ryugyong has been reborn as a symbol of pride and North Korean ingenuity.
For several hours each night, the building that doesn’t have electricity inside becomes the backdrop of a massive light show in which more than 100,000 LEDs flash images of famous statues and monuments, bursts of fireworks, party symbols and political slogans.
The Ryugyong is still unfinished. There’s no public date when, or if, it will host its elusive first guest.
Questions remain over whether the glass-and-concrete hotel is structurally sound. And North Korea’s electricity supply is limited as is. But never mind all that.
“I feel really proud,” Kim, the vice department director of the Korean Light Decoration Center, said in a recent interview at the foot of the hotel.
“I made this magnificent design for this gigantic building and when people see it, it makes them feel good. It makes me proud to work as a designer.”
The display was first lit in April to mark the birthday of the country’s “eternal president,” Kim Il-sung.
Designer Kim said the preparations took about five months. He was in charge of the designing and programming the light display, which took him two months.
Another specialist was responsible for the physical set-up and electrical wiring.
Giant LED displays has been used around the world for many years , and on an even bigger building.
Japanese designer Yusuke Murakami and a London-based company collaborated in 2016 on an LED animation on Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s largest tower.
The 330m Ryugyong tower has three distinct sides.
The main show is displayed on the front, while simpler designs light up the other two.
For a conical section at the very top, Kim created the image of the red, white and blue North Korean flag waving in the wind. It is 40m tall and visible from any direction.
The four-minute main programme begins with an animation showing the history of the nation, followed by homages to ideals like self-reliance and revolutionary spirit and a procession of 17 political slogans such as “single-minded unity”, “harmonious whole” and “100 battles, 100 victories”.
The lights are connected to a computerised controlling system about the size of a household DVD player.
“The whole programme can be stored on an SD card and put into the controller,” Kim said. “We can do the diagnostics on a laptop.”
The Ryugyong is a big part of the legacy of second-generation leader Kim Jong-il, current leader Kim Jong-un’s late father.
He ordered it built as part Pyongyang’s preparations for the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students, which it hosted in 1989 as a kind of counterpoint to the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
The Ryugyong was supposed to be the world’s tallest hotel, surpassing another in Singapore that was built by a South Korean company, but the building fell by the wayside as North Korea experienced a severe economic crash and famines in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union.
It languished in limbo until Egypt’s Orascom Group, which established the North’s cellphone system, helped fund the completion of its glassy exterior in 2011.
“The goal of setting up this light screen is to give confidence and hope for the future to our people,” Kim said.
“The response has been great. The national flag at the top of the building is hundreds of metres high and everyone can see it. It fills them with pride and confidence in being a citizen, willing to work very hard.”
He declined to guess when the hotel itself might open.
“That’s not my field,” he laughed. — AP