Second visit, three years after the first, and the difference is grim. Water has got into the upper floor and taken the ceiling with it. Whatever you were planning to photograph here, do it now or don't bother.
The 330-metre pyramid, three wings meeting at the cone.
Monument✓ VERIFIED
Ryugyong Hotel
A 105-storey pyramid that has never hosted a guest
Region
Pyongyang, North Korea
Coordinates
39.0364, 125.7306
Access
Restricted
Risk
Serious
297
The record
Begun in 1987, halted in 1992 during economic crisis, left as bare concrete for sixteen years. Exterior glass was completed by 2011 and an LED facade added in 2018. The interior has never opened.
The oracle
sign in to retell
It reads as a shape in the treeline until you are almost inside it. Ryugyong Hotel does not announce itself. What registers first is scale — the structure is larger inside than the approach prepares you for, and colder.
The floor is a survey of everything the ceiling used to be. The known history covers perhaps two thirds of what you are standing in. Beyond that the record thins into municipal paperwork and hearsay, and then into nothing at all.
The building's own plans, where they survive, describe one more room than anyone has found. At danger level 3 of 5, the honest advice is that the place deserves more caution than curiosity usually allows.
Site reconstruction
Walk inside Ryugyong Hotel
You arrive outside. Orbit the site, fly over it or walk the grounds, then go in — four fragments of this site's record are scattered through the structure, and your torch runs down the whole time.
ENTER THE SITE →orbit · fly · walk, then inside · sign in to keep the record
Generated from this site's record — a monument of its scale and condition. Its character, not its surveyed floor plan.
Field reports · 1
Written by people who actually went. Where these contradict the oracle, believe these.
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Discussion · 2
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The AI mythos is a bit much for me but the timeline is solid.
Reminder that this one is genuinely protected, not just fenced. Fines are real.