105-storey hotel to finally open 26 years after construction first began - PHOTOS

The 105-storey pyramid-shaped hotel that has dominated the skyline of North Korea's capital city for more than 20 years may finally be on the verge of opening for the first time.

It is hoped Pyongyang's Ryugyong Hotel will partially open in the middle of next year - 26 years after construction began.  It is the 47th tallest building in the world, standing at 1,100ft, and has the fifth highest number of floors.

Reto Wittwer, CEO of international hotel operator Kempinski AG, said only 150 rooms on the very top floors will be used as a hotel instead of the originally intended 3,000. The remainder of the building will contain  shops, offices, ballrooms, restaurants and 150 rooms.

The enormous structure dubbed the 'Hotel of Doom' has been a source of fascination and ridicule around the world and an oversized embarrassment for North Korea's authoritarian regime led by the Korean Workers' Party.

North Korea began building the Ryugyong in the 1980s but stopped when North Korea suffered an economic crisis and funding ran out in the 1990s.

It was voted 'Worst Building in the History of Mankind' by Esquire magazine in 2008, which described the Ryugyong as 'hideously ugly, even by communist standards'.

But exterior construction resumed in 2009 when Egyptian company, Orascom Telecom, took over and various reports in recent years said the hotel was preparing to finally open.
Orascom Telecom launched a mobile network in North Korea in 2008 and has reportedly spent £112m completing the hotel's facade.

In September, a Beijing-based tour agency was allowed to peek inside and released pictures of the bare concrete lobby.  Mr Wittwer said he first saw a picture of the hotel many years ago and thought then that it could eventually make a lot of money.

/dailymail.co.uk/