Ryugyong Hotel: North Korea’s Hotel of Doom

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Published 2020-01-30
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Credits:
Host - Simon Whistler
Author - Morris M
Producer - Jennifer Da Silva
Executive Producer - Shell Harris

Business inquiries to [email protected]

Source/Further reading:

History of the hotel: edition.cnn.com/style/article/ryugyong-hotel-archi…
Overview: www.atlasobscura.com/places/ryugyong-hotel
North Korean famine: www.history.com/news/north-koreas-devastating-fami…
In depth: www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/how-k…
Tales of the famine: www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/north-koreas-…
Cannibalism in the famine: www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/02/…
Kim eating pizza as his countrymen starve: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3559266.stm
History podcast on Kim Jong-il, the handover of power, and the famine: www.stitcher.com/podcast/joe-streckert/interesting…
How the LEDs were installed: www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2180004/r…
Some words on Pyongyang architecture: failedarchitecture.com/pleasure-postponed-pyongyan…
Juche explained: www.vox.com/world/2018/6/18/17441296/north-korea-p…
2014 apartment collapse: www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27459186

All Comments (21)
  • @Emilis2023
    Kim Jong sounds like me in minecraft. Eager to jump into ambitious mega structures, he neglects the early necessities like food farms, creates a gigantic cobblestone frame, then realizes he doesn't know how to do interior decorating and gives up with this massive empty shell.
  • @MrOrcshaman
    The hotel that perfectly represents the Kim's in their entirety, flashy, overbearing, looming over its populous, but hollow, empty and souless inside.
  • @quirkygirlboss
    The Ryugyong is the perfect metaphor for the nation itself, shows that its shining to outsiders but dying, empty and sad inside
  • @Adam-cj2jg
    It looks like a supervillain's headquarters
  • @GonkDroid0923
    Protagonist: The villain's lair could be anywhere The villain's lair:
  • @suzyolsen4820
    Mary Antoinette -"Let them eat cake" Kim Jong Un - "Let them eat grass"
  • @ezviro
    Could you imagine if one day, and yes I know merely in saying this it's highly unlikely, the hotel is transformed into an agricultural center. Indeed the interior floorplan is estimated at a 89 acres. Using similar technology to the Dutch for interior growing, you'd have 1.3 million vertical grow systems capable of producing a staggering 71,500,000 plants every 35-60 days (depending on species). This would go a tremendous way not only to feeding the people but to making the cause of so much suffering into a symbol of hope.
  • @LaurentiuBadea
    Me as a kid: "I hate history. Why the hell do I need to learn every damn nation's history?" Me as an adult: "MORE HISTORY, YOUTUBE!!"
  • One day an aged Gordon Ramsay will once more grab the UV light and the sleeping bag for a last and very special episode of Hotel Hell.
  • It feels like a punch right on the guts to think all the money wasted making this hotel, all the people that died of starvation and in the end it doesn't even serve its purpose, no one can even go there.
  • @DeliveryMcGee
    He didn't mention it, but in case you didn't know, even though it's kinda obvious: most Asian cultures put the family name first. And "Kim" is like the Korean version of "Jones" -- 21.5%of South Koreans have that name, and are only very distantly, if at all, related to the ruling family in the north. (Lee is 15%, and Park is 8.5%. There aren't many family names in Korea, is the joke.)
  • @SplitMaw
    "If that sounds unlikely, well . . . I mean, so does everyone flocking to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany." "AH-"
  • @tilldernarr7185
    "The Ministry of Truth - Minitrue in Newspeak - was startingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enourmous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred metres into the air" George Orwell 1984
  • Imagine how bad it was in NK that China was considered a safe place
  • @Desiii122
    I feel like if you took off his glasses, the nose would come off with them.
  • @joekaz5198
    This man spent almost 25 minutes roasting the shit out of the Kims
  • @mousermind
    Hey, that single turnip is very important. That's an entire month's supply of food for the nation!