Page 16 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
January 7, 2019
World’s tallest empty hotel lit up with N. Korean propaganda
By Eric Talmadge
The Associated Press
YONGYANG, North Korea — The 105-story
Ryugyong Hotel has long been a blot on the
Pyongyang skyline. The world’s tallest
unoccupied building has towered over North Korea’s
capital since 1987, a grand but empty pyramid entirely
dark except for the lone aircraft warning light at its top.
Outsiders saw the unfinished building as the epitome of
failure, while people inside the country took care to rarely
mention it at all.
That is, until light designer Kim Yong Il made the
building once again the talk of the town.
In a brilliant flip of the script, the Ryugyong has been
reborn as a symbol of pride and North Korean ingenuity.
For several hours each night, the building that doesn’t
have electricity inside becomes the backdrop of a massive
light show in which more than 100,000 LEDs flash images
of famous statues and monuments, bursts of fireworks,
party symbols, and political slogans.
The Ryugyong is still unfinished. There’s no public date
when, or if, it will host its elusive first guest. Questions
remain over whether the glass-and-concrete hotel is
structurally sound. And North Korea’s electricity supply
is limited as-is.
But never mind all that.
“I feel really proud,” Kim, the vice department director
of the Korean Light Decoration Center, told The
Associated Press in a recent interview at the foot of the
hotel. “I made this magnificent design for this gigantic
building and when people see it, it makes them feel good.
It makes me proud to work as a designer.”
The display was first lit in April to mark the birthday of
the country’s “eternal president,” Kim Il Sung.
Designer Kim said the preparations took about five
months. He was in charge of designing and programming
the light display, which took him two months. Another
specialist was responsible for the physical setup and
electrical wiring.
Giant LED displays has been used around the world for
many years — and on an even bigger building. Japanese
designer Yusuke Murakami and a London-based
company collaborated in 2016 on an LED animation on
Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s largest tower.
The 1,083-feet Ryugyong tower has three distinct sides.
The main show is displayed on the front, while simpler
designs light up the other two. For a conical section at the
very top, Kim created the image of the red, white, and blue
North Korean flag waving in the wind. It is 40 meters tall
and visible from any direction.
The four-minute main program begins with an
P
HEALTHY FAMILIES, HEALTHY HOMES
animation showing the history of the nation, followed by
homages to ideals like self-reliance and revolutionary
spirit, and a procession of 17 political slogans such as
“single-minded unity,” “harmonious whole,” and “100
battles, 100 victories.”
The lights are connected to a computerized controlling
system about the size of a household DVD player.
“The whole program can be stored on an SD card and
put into the controller,” Kim said. “We can do the
diagnostics on a laptop.”
The Ryugyong is a big part of the legacy of
second-generation leader Kim Jong Il, current leader Kim
Jong Un’s late father.
Falling boulders kill road
workers in Himalayas in India
LUCKNOW, India (AP) — A government official says
boulders crashed down on workers who were widening a
mountainous road leading to a Hindu temple in the
Himalayas, killing seven of them.
District Magistrate Mangesh Gildiyal said another
three workers were injured and 12 rescued from the site
near Rudraprayag in Uttarakhand state. The area is
nearly 235 miles northeast of New Delhi.
Badrinath temple is a revered Hindu religious site
where tens of thousands of devotees visit each year.
Badrinath also is a gateway to several mountaineering
expeditions in the area.
Uttarakhand state is a popular summer holiday
destination for tourists seeking to escape the torrid heat of
the plains. It is also a religious pilgrimage site, with four
temple towns.
KOREAN CREATIVITY. A propaganda message is displayed on
the facade of the pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North
Korea. Transformed into the backdrop for a gargantuan propaganda dis-
play, the capital city’s yet-to-be-completed 105-story Ryugyong Hotel
is once again the talk of North Korea. In a brilliant flip of the script, the
uninhabited building that towers over the capital has been festooned with
more than 100,000 lights that for several hours every night flash propa-
ganda far and wide. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)
He ordered it built as part of Pyongyang’s preparations
for the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students, which
it hosted in 1989 as a kind of counterpoint to the 1988
Seoul Olympics. The Ryugyong was supposed to be the
world’s tallest hotel, surpassing another in Singapore that
was built by a South Korean company, but the building
fell by the wayside as North Korea experienced a severe
economic crash and famines in the 1990s after the fall of
the Soviet Union.
It languished in limbo until Egypt’s Orascom Group,
which established the North’s cellphone system, helped
fund the completion of its glassy exterior in 2011.
Like his father, Kim Jong Un has a penchant for
ambitious building projects, including 82- and 70-story
residences in the capital’s “Ryomyong,” or “dawn,” district
that opened in 2017 and a massive science and technology
complex with a main building shaped like a giant atom.
“The goal of setting up this light screen is to give
confidence and hope for the future to our people,” Kim, the
designer, said as he watched people walking by in the light
of his massive display. “The response has been great. The
national flag at the top of the building is hundreds of
meters high and everyone can see it. It fills them with
pride and confidence in being a citizen, willing to work
very hard.”
He declined to guess when the hotel itself might open.
“That’s not my field,” he laughed.
But he said there’s no plan to turn off the Ryugyong
light show, though updates could be in the works.
“We could change the content,” he said. “The demands
and aspirations of the people and the times change, so we
can change the program to reflect that.”
Eric Talmadge is The AP’s Pyongyang bureau chief.
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