N. Korean hotel unfinished after 30 years

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Pyongyang’s pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel, which poetically enough was built with some help from Egyptians, is one of the world’s strangest landmarks and most conspicuous construction-project failures. Intended to be the world’s tallest hotel, it has yet to host a guest, even though it’s nearly as old as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The perennial mystery: Will it ever?

Nearly 30 years after ground was broken, the tower looms eerily dark in the Pyongyang night, a single light at the top blinking a silent warning to aircraft. By day, residents walk quickly to and from the nearby subway station with nary a glance upward at its 105-story presence.

Earlier this month, a video showing lights toward the top of the tower, combined with a visit to Pyongyang by the hotel’s Egyptian investors, sparked speculation among foreign Pyongyang watchers that construction was resuming and the hotel might even open in 2017. Not to be outdone, some British tabloids were soon reporting the hotel had already opened its doors for guests.

Fact check: It hasn’t. And those lights on the upper floors have gone dark again.

But the idea that Kim might be interested in finally finishing the biggest project started in the name of his grandfather, “eternal president” Kim Il Sung, isn’t particularly outlandish. Since assuming power five years ago, Kim has ordered the construction of a number of skyscrapers that have significantly changed the Pyongyang skyline.

And though the possibility something is afoot at the Ryugyong can’t be ruled out, for the time being Kim appears to be putting his money elsewhere. An apartment building is now nearing completion in the newest project, on Ryomyong Street. It’s about 70 stories and the North’s tallest building outside of the Ryugyong. Earlier this year, a cluster of new, futuristiclooking high-rises was completed on Scientists’ Street, including one at 50 stories.

Construction of the Ryugyong tower began in 1987 and was supposed to take about two years.

For various reasons, it drew on until 1992, which was a very bad year — and the beginning of a very bad decade — for North Korea. The Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, taking with it most of the North’s communist bloc benefactors and setting the stage for a major economic crisis heightened by a series of droughts and a famine that brought North Korea to the verge of collapse.

Construction of the Ryugyong didn’t start up again until 2008.

With a $30 million injection of funds from Egypt’s Orascom Telecommunications Holdings, the building’s exterior was completed in 2011.

In a prospectus from June 2012, Orascom said it expected the partial completion of the Ryugyong’s 360,000 square meters of floor space by the end of the year. It added that Orascom was planning to kick in another $15 million loan “to be repaid when the tower becomes operational.”

Simon Cockerell, general manager of Koryo Tours, which operates in North Korea, is one of the few foreigners to have seen the hotel from the inside.

Cockerell said he has not heard of any significant activity at the Ryugyong since 2012.