March 28, 2023
Photos

Hand-sculpted towers rise up around North Korea’s ‘hotel of doom’ — in photos

Rare ground-level images reveal makeshift construction techniques still used on elite projects in central Pyongyang

Over 30 years after construction largely stopped on North Korea’s 105-story Ryugyong Hotel, the central Pyongyang neighborhood surrounding the empty building dubbed the “hotel of doom” is being transformed into the city’s latest cluster of concrete high-rises. 

NK News has obtained exclusive photos of the new apartment towers taken this summer that offer an unfiltered street level view of imperfectly hand-sculpted concrete facades and scant safety measures on construction sites — scenes that North Korean authorities work hard to hide from the outside world.