The Ryugyong Hotel: A Fitting Monument to Kim Jong Il
by Sandy Ikeda
Wed, 20 Feb 2008 at 2:40 AM
Esquire magazine claims the 3,000-room, 105-story Ryugyong Hotel in central Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, is "The Worst Building in the History of Mankind" (hat tip again to Mario Rizzo):
In 1987, Baikdoosan Architects and Engineers put its first shovel into the ground and more than 20 years later, after North Korea poured more than two percent of its gross domestic product to building this monster, the hotel remains unoccupied, unopened, and unfinished.
(FYI, North Korea's per capita GDP is roughly $1,000, while South Korea's is $25,000 and America's is $43,000.)
The article never quite defends its title's bold claim. At first I thought it was hyperbole, but now I have to agree.
1. In this case, size matters, a lot. Take the worst example of building architecture you know (a bad one for me is the 1960s-vintage modernist courthouse in downtown Brooklyn) and multiply by a factor of 10 or so, and you've got the Ryugyong. (Visit Pyongyang using Google Earth, and you'll have no trouble spotting it.)
2. It's been vacant for 20 years. I won't comment on the design, which is striking in some ways, except to note that its shape is pyramidal. And like the Pyramids of ancient Egypt, the hotel was built with slave labor, but at least the Pyramids were used for something. The Ryugyong is an empty 1,083-foot hulk.
3. The utter waste. Two-percent of US GDP in 2007 would be about $275 billion. The Freedom Tower going up in Lower Manhattan is estimated to cost about $3 billion. As a proportion of GDP then, the Freedom Tower would be about 1/98th the cost of the Ryugyong. Add to this the waste of human life — sickening!
4. On your next visit to the capital of North Korea…. Quoting from the article, "Who the hell travels to beautiful downtown Pyongyang?" Three thousand rooms? What Kim Jong Il was thinking is, as usual, a mystery, but it may turn out to be a most fitting monument to his rule.
Some estimate that the terrible famine that North Koreans suffered from 1995 to 2001 claimed up to 1 million victims. Pouring 2% of GDP into the Ryugyong contributed to this tragedy. The only good thing is that it will serve as a constant reminder of the arrogance of central planning, in which the contempt for individual liberty and indifference toward the unplanned social orders that emerge from it always produce gut-wrenching waste and unimaginable human suffering.
Which suggests a possible use: Inter Kim Jong Il, president of North Korea in it — the sooner the better — along with the 1 million or so citizens his policies starved to death. Then perhaps, like its Egyptian counterparts, in 1,000 years or so tourists will finally pay to see this memorial to government hubris.
***
Speaking of big residential towers, this one infinitely more benign, the construction at 99 Church Street, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, across from the famed Woolworth building, will be, at 912 feet and 68 floors, the tallest residential skyscraper in New York.
In this Daily News article, it's the light-colored building just to the left of the brightly lit street. For more pictures, see the forum over at Skyscraperpage.com. You can see some more here.
Far less massive than the Ryugyong, even with an impending recession, it will reach its break-even occupancy, I'm fairly confident, in less than two decades, which is about how long it took the twin towers of the World Trade Center to finally reach theirs.
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