Ryugyong hotel

(Newser) - While North Korea's second launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile dominated headlines late last week, Pyongyang quietly unveiled renovations around the capital's biggest landmark: a futuristic, pyramid-shaped 105-story hotel, the world's tallest unoccupied building. After decades of embarrassing delays and rumors that the building may not even...

(Newser) - More than two decades ago, North Korea began work on a hotel taller than the Chrysler Building. This spring, after years of ridicule, a portion of Pyongyang's Ryugyong Hotel is set to open, the Washington Post reports. The 105-story building made of concrete still isn't ready for tourists,...

(Newser) - The Ryugyong Hotel in downtown Pyongyang is surely one of the worst architectural failures in history, Eva Hagberg writes in Esquire: Not only has the 105-story building—which sucked up an estimated 2% of North Korea’s annual GDP from 1987 to '92—never opened, but the pyramidal “hotel...