Shine for the high-rise

It is a landmark in the most negative sense of the word — an unfinished, pyramid-shaped structure dominating the city's skyline.

Some call it the “Hotel of Doom'', some “The Phantom Pyramid''.

The Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, is probably the ugliest high-rise in the world but it may awake from its “coma'' soon.

On my last visit to Pyongyang, I looked out of the window of my room on the 23rd floor of the surprisingly posh Koryo Hotel — reserved for foreigners — and enjoyed watching the sun set behind the city's skyline.

From this elevation, the panorama Pyongyang presented seemed similar to what other Far East Asian metropolises would have in their turn — high-rises, broad avenues and residential compounds.

But appearances deceive. Pyongyang is clearly different.
There is no street lighting, no traffic and no public life after dark; there are no restaurants, shopping facilities, cinemas or other entertainment venues; no chatter, no honking, no urban noise is heard.

There is a foul smell in the air. Coal fumes from the power station in the north are blowing over the city, where they apparently mingle with the stale air of the numerous unventilated Communist Party committee meeting rooms.

It is a familiar smell, a mixture of unfiltered power plant fumes, disinfectant sprays and chalk (which is used to white-wash buildings) — the smell I experienced years ago in former East Berlin, in Moscow's suburbs, in Bucharest, in Novosibirsk, in Kiev.

Apparently, communism had an odour.
Rising above all this, the Ryugyong stands silhouetted against the sky.

The structure was planned as a 105-storey five-star hotel. Proposed in the time of the late “Great Leader'' Kim Il-sung, the project was to be funded by foreign investors.

Construction began in 1987 but ceased in 1992, two years before Kim Il-sung's death.

The curious building — which has since remained untouched — constantly attracts the attention of foreign visitors.

At 330 metres it is the 24th tallest building on the planet and, although unfinished, is the largest man-made structure on the Korean peninsula.

With more than 3,000 rooms, it would have been the Earth's tallest hotel if it had opened as planned in the early 1990s.

The construction stopped due to the withdrawal of foreign investors — mainly French and Japanese — at a time when the Eastern bloc and its communist regimes began to dissolve and North Korea plunged into its deepest crisis since its formation in 1948.

The country was unable to continue the project on its own. At that time, the construction costs were projected at $750 million, approximately 2 per cent of North Korea's GDP.

Exposed to snow, rain, frost and ice in winter and the dry heat of summer, the building's ferro-concrete walls and interiors have decayed.

It has no glass windows, fittings or fixtures.
When I asked Kim, the secret service agent for inter-cultural relations disguised as my tour guide, if we could visit the Ryugyong Hotel, she said: “What hotel? There is no hotel.''

There was no irony in her voice, only a definiteness that defied contradiction.

North Korean officials have very elaborate means of telling foreigners about things that aren't visible at all — such as the happiness of their people, the superiority of the political system, the advantages of a self-sufficient economy and the like — but it is difficult for them to ignore visible signs of embarrassment, of which the Ryugyong is an obvious example.

In recent years, picture postcards of Pyongyang — a few of which are on sale in hotel shops — did not show the Ryugyong Hotel. It disappeared even from official illustrated books.

The hotel was not part of official city tours and quick, drive-by zoom shots were the only way to photograph the building.

But things may change now. Work on the Ryugyong Hotel has resumed with the North Korean government liaising with the Egyptian company Orascom.

Sources said the conglomerate based in Cairo, which also invests in countries such as Congo, Zimbabwe and Somalia, has said it is planning to convert the building into a business hotel and convention centre.

Recent pictures from Pyongyang show the building being equipped with a blue glass cladding, a measure irritating international building experts because many of them see an urgent need to overhaul the structure.

Close-up pictures of the building show its poor state:

Reinforcing steel bars are exposed and rusted and there are many other structural defects that could make it impossible for the hotel developers to receive an occupation certificate which would be a prerequisite for operating the building even by North Korean standards.

According to North Korean officials, the hotel building will “definitely be refurbished'' and made ready for an official opening in 2012 on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Kim Il-sung.

Orascom sources, however, are charier. They said the hotel will get a new cladding to make it more attractive. Mobile phone transmitter equipment will be installed atop the structure.

Orascom says it was granted a commercial licence to build a nationwide 3G mobile telephony infrastructure in North Korea at an investment of $400 million.

Given that North Korean citizens are still banned from using mobile phones and that a similar attempt made a few years ago by the French company Alcatel had failed due to restrictions imposed by the government, the Orascom investment — which perhaps includes the renovation of the Ryugyong Hotel's exterior as a courtesy — can be considered a high-risk venture.

But anything else would be a surprise in a country like North Korea.