The Ryugyong Hotel, which was started to be built with great costs with the aim of becoming the worlds largest hotel in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, but could not be opened for 37 years, is known as the hotel of doom due to its construction that could not be completed.
While the construction of the thousand-metre hotel rising in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, which is closed to the world, has been going on for years, the hotel, which was laid in 1987 and planned to be completed in two years and opened in 1989 to coincide with the World Youth and Student Festival, turned into a ghost building.
At the end of the 1980s, the record for the world's tallest hotel was held by a South Korean company, and the pyramid-shaped 3,000-room, 105-storey giant Ryugyong Hotel, which was started to be built to break this record, later took its place in the skyline of Pyongyang with a height of more than a thousand metres. But despite costing around $757 million (TL 23 billion 736 million), progress on the building has stalled over the years.
The planned height of the hotel was reached in 1992, but construction was halted when North Korea entered an economic crisis. For the next 16 years, the Ryugyong Hotel stood empty with its bare concrete facade rising above the surrounding buildings. When the hotel could not be completed and opened, the building was likened to the Doomsday Hotel among the people. After a long time, the crane was removed and Ryugyong Hotel was covered with metal and glass at a cost of 181 million dollars (5 billion 600 million TL).
In late 2012, the German hotel group Kempinski announced that it would open Ryugyong Hotel under its own management the following year, but only a few months later it cancelled the plans. According to experts, another $2 billion (63 billion 200 million TL) is needed to complete the hotel.
