The Ryugyong Hotel is, in my opinion, the single most unsettling structure ever erected by the hand of man. It’s 1,082 feet tall, has 105 floors, and encloses 3.9 million square feet of floor space. . . .

The Ryugyong Hotel looms over Pyongyang like some kind of slumbering bat. Something deep inside my brain tells me that the 75° angle of the hotel’s outer walls is exactly the wrong angle; it says sinister, it says creepy, it says get away.

Okay, so tastes differ. I think it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up; maybe the North Koreans think it’s sweet as punkin’ pie. That still begs the question of why. The DPRK maintains strict control over tourists and other visitors. The Ryugyong was designed to have 3,000 rooms, but at the time it was built only a few thousand people were allowed into the country per year, and almost none of them were destined for Pyongyang. Even today, after the establishment of the Kŭmgang-san tourist region, the DPRK only sees about 130,000 tourists per year. Every single one of them could book a week-long stay in the Ryugyong and the hotel would still be significantly under capacity.