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)
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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.
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The Ryugyong, that’s my favorite hotel. Love that place
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The hotel that perfectly represents the Kim's in their entirety, flashy, overbearing, looming over its populous, but hollow, empty and souless inside.
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Protagonist: The villain's lair could be anywhere The villain's lair:
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It looks like a supervillain's headquarters
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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"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
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Me at the beginning: That building's not actually that ugly Me at the end, after learning about the famine: You're right, that's the ugliest damn building I've ever seen in my life
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The Ryugyong is the perfect metaphor for the nation itself, shows that its shining to outsiders but dying, empty and sad inside
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Mary Antoinette -"Let them eat cake" Kim Jong Un - "Let them eat grass"
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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!!"
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This man spent almost 25 minutes roasting the shit out of the Kims
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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.
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Imagine how bad it was in NK that China was considered a safe place
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"Welcome to the hotel Ryuguong, such a lovely place, such a waste of space..."
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15:54 To know how bad it was: in the 90s "fled for the safety of China"
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I can't express how happy I felt watching him roasting the Kim