Mick Hartley

All eyes today will be on the official opening of Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building, but let's not forget another memorable high-rise folly – the Ryugyong Hotel. For 16 years, from 1992 to 2008, the 105-story monstrosity, by common consent the ugliest building on earth, was left as an unfinished concrete shell looming over Pyongyang. Since last year, though, Egypt's Orascom Group has been working on it, with, apparently, a target completion date of April 15th 2012, the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung.

Here's a recent Pyongyang cityscape, with the new glass panels on the front, and the refurbished circular top floors, clearly visible:

[Photo: Paul Ark]

Here's a closer view:

[Photo: Korea Economic Institute]

For more of those KEI photos, see here.

There were rumours of slipshod construction and poor quality concrete when the hotel was originally built. The structure was declared "irreparable" by a European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea delegation ten years after construction. While we only have a few (officially sanctioned) photos to go on, my guess is that what we're seeing is a cosmetic exercise. The Kim regime realised that the Ryugyong was an eyesore and an embarrassment. Rather than taking the sensible course and knocking the whole wretched thing down – which would have been an unthinkable admission of failure – they're taking the cheapest option and covering it in glass panels to make it look better. There simply aren't the cranes and scaffolding you'd expect if a major refurbishment was under way. Nor, I suspect, is there the money or the expertise. What, I wonder, does it look like on the other, dark, side, where no cameras are permitted? They are simply glassing over the cracks.

We'll know more when April 2012 – Juche 100 - comes around. Who knows, maybe there really will be some cause for celebration by then, when the cracks become too big and the whole rotten edifice of the DPRK will have come crashing down.