[HN Gopher] Rare Photos from Inside North Korea's 'Hotel of Doom...
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Rare Photos from Inside North Korea's 'Hotel of Doom' (2023)
Author : gnabgib
Score : 158 points
Date : 2025-02-17 19:59 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.9news.com.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.9news.com.au)
| 486sx33 wrote:
| I mean , none of these photos is rare at all...
|
| https://nationalpost.com/news/new-photos-reveal-inside-of-no...
|
| 2012
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| It is a term journalists like to use to convey that they're
| doing important work or that you're reading something valuable.
| I see them use this kind of language for many things, hoping
| that readers fall for it.
| socksy wrote:
| I mean I guess compared to photos of the Eiffel tower...
| BucketsMcG wrote:
| Nothing is rare on the Internet. It's a pet bugbear of mine.
| albino_yak wrote:
| Yeah, they seem to be re-reporting a story from 2012. Here's an
| archived post from 2012 with the same picture of the same tour
| guide (Simon Cockerell) at the top of the hotel:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20141110072645/http://koryogroup...
| FabHK wrote:
| Makes sense. From the article:
|
| > Cockerell began running tours to North Korea with the
| company Koryo Tours in 2002 ...
|
| > Ten years later, Cockerell met a North Korean who was
| working in China, and that man had the contacts necessary to
| arrange a visit.
|
| Though the article has some later information:
|
| > No doubt a source of pain for the Kim dynasty, the
| impressive 554m Lotte World Tower in Seoul, South Korea,
| which was finished in 2017, dwarfs the Ryugyong Hotel.
| waynecochran wrote:
| Those are the same internal photos. Where are all of these
| other photos you allude to?
| napworth wrote:
| "Inside". Proceeds to show three photots.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Well, it does say "from" the inside rather than "of" the
| inside.
| napworth wrote:
| I believe those are the same thing. You tell me you have rare
| photos from inside the Titan Submersible, I'm going to expect
| multiple story defining shots from _inside_. Not just stock
| photos of the sea.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This should be your reminder that economic sanctions really does
| nothing but starve ordinary people to death while doing nothing
| to the ruling regime and, in many cases, strengthens support for
| it as those enacting the sanctions are (with merit) seen as the
| enemy.
|
| Back in 1996, then UN Ambassador and later Secretry of State was
| asked about the 500,000 Iraqi children who died due to economic
| sanctions and she replied "we think the price was worth it" [1].
|
| The next century for the Korean peninsula is going to be
| interesting. Looming large is the collapse of South Korea. The
| current fertility rate is the lowest in the world at ~0.71
| children per woman. What that means is if you take 50 men and 50
| women in 3 generations you have 8 people. We haven't seen
| anything like this before.
|
| I, too, find NOrth Korea fascinating but what I find more
| fascinating is how and what we talk about with North Korea and
| how it's never about the starvation and death we directly cause.
|
| [1]: https://x.com/schwarz/status/1506723921302855686
| elhudy wrote:
| Preventing the north korean regime from having the funds to
| grow its military presence seems like a fair use of economic
| sanctions to me - sadly, even if there is an economic cost to
| its people.
| guerrilla wrote:
| You're not responding to the comment you're trying to reply
| to. The claim is that it does not actually do that, only
| starves ordinary people.
| elhudy wrote:
| I thought the context of the previous response was that
| sanctions _do nothing to the regime_ i.e. in terms of
| strengthening, weakening, or getting rid of. The North
| korean dictatorship remains in place so that is agreeable.
| However, North korean military presence (seen as distinct
| from the regime presence) has seemingly faltered
| dramatically.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > North korean military presence (seen as distinct from
| the regime presence)
|
| That distinction is nonsencial in this context.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Do sanctions force North Korea to adopt ridiculous internal
| agricultural policies which leads to frequent famines?
| cess11 wrote:
| Life expectancy follows South Korea rather closely, with
| the exception of a period in the nineties:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_in_Nor
| th_...
|
| Is that to be expected with frequent famines?
| philistine wrote:
| That chart does not at all show that it follows South
| Korea! It is massively behind and has suffered a
| debilitating famine in the 90s. That on top of the
| spurious data collecting in North Korea that probably
| skews those numbers.
|
| The people against sanctions want countries around the
| world to be forced to trade with North Korea. We don't
| have to be forced to trade with anyone. Free trade is
| earned, not a right for all the dictators of the world.
| cess11 wrote:
| Right, so one famine in the nineties. Other than that the
| curve is very similar to the one for South Korea.
|
| Is this expected under regularly occuring famines?
| etc-hosts wrote:
| The way US sanctions against countries work is when we
| sanction a country, we also sanction any other country or
| entity or person who passes money or goods in return for
| money or goods from the targeted country.
|
| It's not simply "We've decided to not buy and sell goods
| from a certain country."
|
| more info here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/i
| nteractive/2024/us-...
|
| What really happens with US sanctions is the guys we
| sanction all decide to band together with each other and
| to oppose and hate America, and eventually withdraw from
| using the US Dollar, reducing the US's influence. That
| may be good or it may be bad but its definitely not what
| the US has in mind when it sanctions a country.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| By "a period in the nineties", you mean "since the
| nineties", right? So basically for the past 35 years
| North Korea has been heavily lagging in life expectancy.
|
| Another way to put that is it's been 75 years since Korea
| split, and half that time North Korea has been much worse
| than south Korea.
|
| Let's not even get into what that chart would look like
| if humanitarian aid wasn't shipped during those famines.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Life expectancy in the northern portion of Korea was
| higher than in the southern portion up until the point
| the US bombed 2/3 of all buildings in the northern
| portion.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| If you look at the graph, life expectancy didn't really
| diverge until the 90s, 40 years after the bombing
| campaign.
|
| And, any way, the North Koreans started it.
| cess11 wrote:
| In that chart I see one clearly identifiable famine,
| after which the life expectancy started rising again. Can
| you perhaps take a copy and mark out the other famines?
|
| North Korea infamously refuses foreign aid, do you have a
| source that describes more in detail the aid you're
| referring to?
| decimalenough wrote:
| The World Food Programme has been operating in North
| Korea for years, "when possible" (read: whenever it suits
| the whims of the Kims).
|
| https://www.wfp.org/countries/democratic-peoples-
| republic-ko...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| The 1990s famine, if you want to call if that, is also
| sometimes described as a series of famines.
|
| Here's more details about the aid I'm referring to.
|
| 700,000 tonnes in 1999 alone, from one country.
|
| https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/R40095.pdf
| jmyeet wrote:
| North Korea has roughly the equal third largest standing army
| in the world. North Korea has nuclear weapons. What exactly
| have we prevented?
|
| My point is that economic sanctions never work against
| enemies. They only work against allies. Apartheid South
| Africa is the example that springs to mind.
|
| Take the economic sanctions against Russia after it's
| unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine. What have they done
| exactly? Russia is now basically a war economy. It still has
| energy exports because there's always a market for that.
| elhudy wrote:
| I don't get why you're trying to characterize NKs military
| as strong when it is objectively not so. The goal for
| stability in the region is for SK to have a stronger
| military. If we want to look at whether sancions have
| progressed that goal, then we would need to evaluate the
| relative strength of the two since the time sanctions went
| into place. How large of a standing army they have is not
| your kpi
| maxglute wrote:
| TBH NK special case in that they make sanctions bite
| extra hard out of (Juche) policy. They're in prime
| geography to evade/smuggle all they want. IMO pretty good
| illustration on the maximum limits of US sanctions - i.e.
| countries with enough industrial base with max sanctions
| and tying their own hands can still concentrate enough
| resources to nuclearize and build icbms. Reality is NK
| nuclearization threatens US regional security
| architecture and likely reached stretch goal of
| penetrating CONUS GMD, i.e. NK basically the only shit
| tier country that can on paper nuke US.
|
| Conventionally, now that we're in era of cheap drone
| warfare, harder to extrapolate NK/SK force disparity
| anymore. Risks no longer limited to artillery a few dozen
| km south of DMZ. NK building loitering munitions that can
| cover entirity of SK - SK has no longer have even modest
| strategic depth to hide high end hardware unlike few
| years ago. Ditto with Iran being able to credibly hit
| Israel. But that's more factor of tech proliferation.
| matteoraso wrote:
| I really doubt that worked, given that North Korea does most
| of its trade with China and Russia, who don't participate in
| the sanctions. Besides, they already have nukes and the
| ability to launch them over the ocean. The military presence
| has grown as much as the regime needs it to with the
| sanctions, so there's no point to keeping them anymore.
| dingnuts wrote:
| if their economic situation is the result of sanctions by the
| West, why is trade with China insufficient to turn around their
| economy?
| thisislife2 wrote:
| They aren't just sanctioned by the west, there's UN sanctions
| on NK too. China and Russia are more inclined to abide by UN
| sanctions than western sanctions. (But this has now changed
| after the Ukraine war, and both countries do appear to have
| strengthened military ties with NK).
|
| Moreover, due to the sanctions, NK can't acquire Euros or
| dollars essential for international trading, and only afford
| to pay with its own currency. This means that unless there is
| equal trading between NK and other countries, any trade
| imbalance in favour of NK would mean the other country would
| get stuck with a lot of NK's currency in their banks with no
| real idea what to do with it. That is why China and Russia
| actually do barter-trading with North Korea (i.e. they mostly
| exchange goods and services, instead of money, when they
| trade).
| rightbyte wrote:
| The failed military coup in SK changed my view on the country
| quite a lot. Reading up on their presidents where the legacy
| seem to be if they are sentenced to death after impeachement or
| not ...
|
| It is like the cracyness in NK makes people assume SK is sane.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The only unusual aspect of the failed South Korean coup is
| the failed part. They've had a crazy number of coups in their
| short history.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| I feel you on SK and demographics, but 3 generations is still a
| very long time these days. We're talking close to 200 years
| before anything like a population collapse.
| fernandopj wrote:
| Only if you count as "people dying and then the next". After
| a parcel of a population reaches adulthood, another
| generation is already expected. See the delta between GenX,
| Millenials, GenZ, and so on. I'd say that scenario is closer
| to 40 years.
|
| The "coming sooner" problem with such low fertility rate is
| the bell-curve of your population by age. It starts to center
| on lower-productivity ages, more medical resources are
| needed. The system can't sustain itself with a thinner base
| on age.
| callc wrote:
| The idea that the sanctions 'we' (I will treat 'we' as the
| western world) place on NK directly cause NK starvation and
| death needs an _exuberant_ amount of evidence.
|
| NK literally and figuratively puts guns to the heads of their
| citizens and kill's people trying to escape from the country.
|
| NK "government" (quotes since they act like a gang) forces a
| cult following of Kim Jong-(Il, Un).
|
| NK aligned with USSR and China and tried to out Communism. But
| like USSR and CCP, the centralization of power into a single
| leader squashed the good hopes of communism and turned into
| totalitarianism (absolutely power corrupts absolutely).
|
| How about 'we' treat NK as a grown up country that has
| responsibility for the welfare of its people? "We" are not
| responsible for the starvation in NK, just like all the how all
| the villains in movies say "You're forcing me to do <horrendous
| act>!" No, really, you're doing it yourself because you're
| insane and care about other things over the lives of people.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| It's the same with the Cuba sanctions. They have achieved
| nothing but suffering.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >This should be your reminder that economic sanctions really
| does nothing but starve ordinary people to death
|
| That's not true. I mean we can look at Russia, which is
| currently under the maximum number of sanctions and doesn't
| seem to have any problems with food. It is leftist regimes,
| that bear responsibilities for starvation, not sanctions. Food
| is rather easy to grow (unless the communists forbade it, of
| course).
|
| >strengthens support for it as those enacting the sanctions are
| (with merit) seen as the enemy.
|
| That's also doesn't work in such way. Appearance of new enemies
| does not lead to the support of the more hostile and dangerous
| old ones.
| yongjik wrote:
| I'm not sure how to feel about sanctions in general, but when
| it comes to North Korea, I think the blame firmly lies on its
| government.
|
| Since the days of president Kim Daejung (1998-2003) every
| liberal South Korean regime tried to build trust with North
| Korea, including the controversial Kaesong industrial complex
| (housing factories owned by South Korean companies inside NK,
| with NK workers), which North Korea unilaterally shut down in
| 2013. Railway connections: severed by North Korea. Group tour
| of mount Kumkang: stopped after a North Korean soldier shot and
| killed a South Korean tourist who walked into a restricted
| area.
|
| Basically, every time South Korea tries to give North Korea
| money in exchange of better relation, North Korea pisses it
| off, to such a degree that these policies (and their perceived
| failure) are now regular talking points by conservative South
| Korean pundits.
|
| At this stage, there's not a lot of things we can try, unless
| we want to just give NK money and say "Oh please develop more
| nuclear weapons with this money, we don't care what you do."
| lqet wrote:
| Offtopic, but every time I watch a documentary on North Korea I
| am happy to see that so much of the old Berlin subway rolling
| stock seems to lead a nice retirement live there - according to
| Wikipedia, they use 220 Class D cars from the 50ies and 60ies
| (132 in active service) in the Pyongyang Metro, and another 120
| Class G cars from the 70ies were converted into trains for the
| Korean State Railway. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_Metro
| lisper wrote:
| > every time I watch a documentary on North Korea I am happy
|
| There is something deeply wrong with that. It's kind of like
| saying that every time you watch a documentary on the Holocaust
| you are happy the fate of the rolling stock that took people to
| Auschwitz. It is almost literally the same thing.
|
| https://www.vox.com/2014/10/27/7073029/north-korea-gulags-pr...
|
| There is absolutely nothing to be happy about when it comes to
| North Korea.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryongchon_disaster
|
| Such blast. Much wow!
| pastureofplenty wrote:
| Did North Korea piss in your cornflakes?
| latentcall wrote:
| Are you really comparing North Korea to the HOLOCAUST? I
| can't even fathom it.
| lisper wrote:
| I cannot fathom that you think this is an inapt comparison.
| North Korea's raw body count might be slightly lower
| (though even that is questionable [1]), but in many ways,
| North Korea is worse than Nazi Germany was. In fact, this
| is so obvious to me that I am seriously entertaining the
| hypothesis that all the hate my comment is getting is
| coming from DPRK government shills.
|
| [1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-
| watch/35-million-dea...
| itsmartapuntocm wrote:
| _" If you're building a skyscraper out of reinforced concrete,
| the only way for it to be stable is to design it in the shape of
| a pyramid."_
|
| Except the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur are standard
| supertalls built out of reinforced concrete?
| lqet wrote:
| But not "standard" reinforced concrete:
|
| > Due to the huge cost of importing steel, the towers were
| constructed on a cheaper radical design of super high-strength
| reinforced concrete. High-strength concrete is a material
| familiar to Asian contractors and twice as effective as steel
| in sway reduction; however, it makes the building twice as
| heavy on its foundation as a comparable steel building.
| Supported by 23-by-23 metre concrete cores and an outer ring of
| widely spaced super columns, the towers use a sophisticated
| structural system that accommodates its slender profile and
| provides 560,000 square metres of column-free office space. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronas_Towers
| adrian_b wrote:
| Looking in Wikipedia, they still have a section that diminishes
| with the height and they are made of some special "super high-
| strength reinforced concrete".
|
| Even by using this special reinforced concrete, the towers are
| twice heavier than if they had used a steel structure.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Pfft, amateurs. America has more "hotels of doom" than that.
| Almost every medium and big city has some abandoned office
| building with drug addicted squatters. The koreans forgot to add
| them.
|
| The article could do with more mentions of "doom", "propaganda",
| and other synonyms for evil. Maybe even an "allegedly" quote from
| a non-existent source?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It was literally the tallest building in North Korea AND the
| tallest unoccupied building in the world for a long time(2nd
| only to a building in china now).
|
| If you have hundreds of skyscrapers, an unoccupied one isn't
| crazy. But that's not North Korea. Trying to find equivalence
| here is ludicrous.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| Parent comment is probably more annoyance at the propaganda
| Americans are exposed to without realizing it, making us all
| think that communism and Russia and China and North Korea are
| scary monsters in the closet that are going to get us. I
| think you'd find it difficult to find an American who both
| dislikes communism and can have more than a couple sentences
| of why they feel that way. And I think most every American is
| pretty oblivious to the equally and sometime more shitty
| things that the US does and completely fails to keep in mind
| that we're literally genociding countries and have done so
| since forever
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Next time you read an
| article in the Economist about how "Xi hates this one
| trick", pay attention to the attribution of the sources.
| It's all carefully written to frame unsubstantiated
| statements as facts, and to be able to deny it later.
| latentcall wrote:
| Yeah I find it hard to believe any Western propaganda
| about China anymore. Like the OpenAI thing with China
| using AI to spy on citizens or whatever? OpenAI is now a
| tool of the feds and they can just make it up? With the
| recent elections politicians just make things up and
| their constituents believe it immediately and forever.
|
| Trump saying the plane crash was a DEI hire caused event?
| What about WMD's in Iraq? What about conservatives
| believing kids use litter boxes in schools now? We can
| take it so far.
|
| I'm not saying China is the world's greatest country or
| anything but I don't think they're as bad as the media
| wants us to believe.
| theamk wrote:
| It goes both ways - my experience is that Americans who
| like communism are people who have never experienced it..
| maybe they blindly trust in Soviet propaganda, maybe they
| just project some idealistic idea of communism, creating a
| beautiful but not very realistic picture.
| gamedever wrote:
| yea, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840EVoHAyvE
| thih9 wrote:
| > For several hours each night, the glass facade acts as a giant
| LED screen to project slogans and short videos to citizens of
| Pyongyang.
|
| Examples:
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AkZ2SijQOE
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo-rXlPr_94
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| Thanks, annoying the article didn't include photos
| gamedever wrote:
| Maybe you have them blocked? The article has 13+ photos
| berdario wrote:
| None of the photos show the "LED screen" effect
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Even the 'light show' has an almost Blade Runner-esque
| retrofuturistic vibe to it:
| https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/blade-runner-advertise...
| m0llusk wrote:
| Reminder of the developer's maxim: A beautiful building is a
| fully rented one.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Anytime I see a picture of North Korea I think
|
| 1) is the person now banned? 2) did insiders get punished?
|
| For this one, I worry for those insiders. They made their choice
| but I can't imagine Kim is happy this got out.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| The article isn't exactly hard hitting. It debunks myths that
| make North Korea look bad, doesn't talk about how many people
| died making it, etc
| gwern wrote:
| > Having visited the hermit state around 200 times through
| working as a tour guide
|
| He's a regime supporter who brings in desperately needed
| foreign currency to help pay for the nuke & missile program
| and elite luxuries. Hence, given that he has talked about and
| posted this, he is almost certainly correct when he says
|
| > Some media has portrayed the idea that North Koreans are
| embarrassed by the empty hotel or the length of time it took
| to finish, Cockerell said, "but I never found that to be
| true"..."That's ludicrous, and never been true. Absolute
| nonsense. It used to appear on the front of books and
| magazines, even when it was an incomplete concrete shell with
| a crane up top. So that's complete rubbish. It was not a
| cause for embarrassment." Cockerell said the Kim family
| simply put the blame on America, falsely explaining to the
| North Korean people that the delays were "the fault of
| jealous conspiracies" from outside Western powers...Cockerell
| has also observed how Pyongyang locals interact with the
| structure. "It's not like people sit on their balconies,
| watching the slogans go by. It's just part of the nightlife.
| It's a futuristic building to North Koreans, very modern,
| unlike anything else."
|
| That is, this post is sort of a quasi 'submarine' for North
| Korean tourism. 'Come see our unique pyramid, which we think
| is cool rather than a symptom of totalitarian dictatorship
| (and pay us a lot of renminbi/dollars/yen)!'
| kstrauser wrote:
| When I see pictures, I'm always surprised by how relatively
| normal it looks from a distance. I guess I pictured it more
| 1984 style, with grey cubed buildings and zero trees,
| decoration, or anything else pleasant.
|
| _From a distance_ , it seems remarkably normal to me. I have
| no desire to visit and certainly wouldn't want to live there,
| but it _looks_ not all that bad.
| robotnikman wrote:
| It could all be an example of a 'Potemkin village'
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
| qingcharles wrote:
| Simon has unprecedented access to NK. More than any other
| Westerner, I think. He's been doing this for so long, without
| reprisal, that I think he must know where the line is on what
| he can publicly document.
|
| If you meet him, ask him about the _other_ stuff he can 't
| document... :)
| pydry wrote:
| I went on one of his tours and during the annual military
| parade I watched him wander _all_ over the route while we
| watched from one spot.
|
| I caught up and was like "wtf can we do this? they dont
| mind?"
|
| He told me yea, no problem go wherever you like in the parade
| just dont do anything stupid. So we did.
|
| He was very clear about when we needed to hold back, but also
| knew _exactly_ which boundaries could be pushed.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| There's some kind of cartoonist supervillian picture of North
| Korea. It's quite surprising when you learn that it's a country
| filled with ordinary people, doing ordinary things like us.
|
| Yes it's incredibly paranoid and authoritarian, but when you
| learn the history it makes sense why it is like that.
|
| This is a country that was utterly destroyed by a superpower,
| who crowed about it, and which still threatens it.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| A much better model is that it is ruled by the Kim family as
| a dictatorship for the last eighty years. Wars, other
| countries, and the like are mere sideshows. Sure, they
| influenced NK's history, but fundamentally it is a story of
| autocratic rule more than anything else.
| latentcall wrote:
| At least they get free healthcare!
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Check out that magnificent skyline
| tempodox wrote:
| > "There is a kind of North Korean-ness about it," he said.
|
| I take it, monumental effort for close to zero functionality is
| North-Korean.
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| I wonder what giant shadows this building casts, and how
| unfortunate it is for those live near it.
| decimalenough wrote:
| > _No doubt a source of pain for the Kim dynasty, the impressive
| 554m Lotte World Tower in Seoul, South Korea, which was finished
| in 2017, dwarfs the Ryugyong Hotel._
|
| This is in fact doubly painful, since the whole reason they built
| the Ryugyong is (apparently) that a South Korean company built
| what was then the world's tallest hotel in Singapore.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss%C3%B4tel_The_Stamford
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