Yanggakdo Hotel, our hotel downtown Pyongyang

The Yanggakdo Hotel is situated on the Yanggak Islet in the middle of the Taedong River in central Pyongyang. Although the hotel is downtown Pyongyang, it is effectively cut-off from the city. Being located on an island in the middle of a wide river, its location ensures zero contact with locals. Foreigners are therefore isolated from Pyongyang, even though we are surrounded by the city. The hotel is one of Pyongyang’s skyscrapers, with 47 floors.

Even though North Korea is in the midst of a severe hydroelectric shortage and Pyongyang suffers constant rolling blackouts, electricity is pumped generously into the Yanggakdo Hotel. The hotel is lit up like a light bulb constrasting with the almost complete darkness of the surrounding city. My first sight of the hotel is imprinted in my mind. We arrived into a dark and rainy Pyongyang with only a few dull lights emanating from some Socialist apartment blocks. The city was in virtual blackness, despite some of the monuments and propaganda murals lit up as though the sun was shining only on them (although those lights are shut off around 10PM at night). We drove along the banks of the Taedong River, which we could not even see due to the darkness, and were confronted by a skyscraper lit up so bright that it resembled some star in outer space. In fact, the hotel reminded me of an alien spaceship that just landed in the dark abyss, especially with the circular structure on top of the building. It was an eerie image and I had a creepy feeling as we drew closer and closer to the hotel and crossed the bridge linking the Islet to the mainland.

We were all happy to finally see some bright lights and eagerly got off the bus and hurried into the main lobby of the hotel. The lobby was a large room with marble archways and staircases, a icicle chandlier, a futuristic slanted roof with giant square lights, and large vases of flowers. The lobby was lit, but even some of its lights were shut off because the lobby was not very bright. The blue-black marble, of course, did not help with the light.

We were assigned our rooms by our guides. We could not switch or change our minds for any reason. Once we were assigned a room number and key, that was where we were to hunker down whilst staying in this hotel. I roomed with Emily, a great woman in her 20s, from Canada, and who now works as a successful strategist for Shell in England. We hit it off instantly when we met on the bus ride in from the airport, and became fast friends. I enjoyed her company very much. She is smart, well educated, easygoing, and has a wacky sense of humour. That being said, many of us on this tour hit it off quickly. We were all thrown into a crazy situation in a crazy country. The situation almost forced us to develop strong bonds within a short amount of time. I made some great friends while in North Korea, but more on them later.

The 47th floor is a revolving restaurant that provides a complete panorama of Pyongyang. It provided stunning views. I was impressed. It was kind of Commie-glam to eat our North Korean dishes up there, as we slowly revolved around the Pyongyang skyline. The restaurant, with its Soviet-retro designs and primary colours, reminded me of a set from some 1960s James Bond movie. The following is me about to enjoy lunch in the revolving restaurant with the Pyongyang skyline in the background.




The hotel also featured other restaurants, tea rooms, shops, many bars, massage parlours, sauna, pool, casino, pitch and putt golf, and lounges. I was shocked at all its features. It's a pleasure palace compared to the rest of North Korea. But it is exclusively for foriegners; 'regular' North Koreans are not allowed in. The hotel staff is all vetted to work with foreigners, and the casino and massage parlours are located deep in the recesses of the hotel with strictly only Chinese staff. North Koreans are forbidden from entering the casino area.

The hotel was rather strange, almost like a weird building from a “Doctor Who” episode. There is an old “Doctor Who” episode that takes place in a former luxury hotel ‘world’ that has turned into an eerie wasteland. This hotel reminded me of that "Doctor Who" episode. It wasn’t that the hotel was crumbling, in fact it was quite new and modern. But it was eerie and the inside was kind of creepy. For example, the hotel was basically a giant labyrinth. It could be very confusing, with long corridors and hallways jutting off here, breaking away there, appearing out of nowhere. There were a number of different ‘basements’ where many of the attractions were located. These basements were like mazes, one could get lost in. The basement-mazes were half-lit and therefore shadowy, with very low ceilings, and long stretches where there would be nothing but walls. Suddenly a room would appear, which would lead to a shop or bar or the pool or something; then the corridor would twist and turn and stretch on for a long time before there was any other sign of life. There were three of these basements, and the bottom one – which I never visited – had the Chinese-run casino and massage parlours.

The hotel’s elevators were also really creepy. There were six altogether, two of which were glass elevators overlooking the river. The elevators were creepy in that “Doctor Who” sense because they were incredibly slow and some stopped at almost every floor even though there was no one waiting on those floors! At least 90% of the hotel was unoccupied, and so the elevator would just stop at a floor that was pitch black. It took forever to get from the lobby floor to any other floor, let alone the higher levels. If you were in a rush and forgot something in your room, you had to forget about quickly jetting back up to get it. There was no time to wait for the snail’s pace of the elevators. It was frustrating.



There was a huge international controversy surrounding the hotel. It was built in the mid-1990s by a French contractor. A member of the French government convinced the government to allow the contractor to build in the internationally-isolated DPRK for financial and tourist purposes. He convinced his colleagues, and the deal received government approval. The French contractor built the skyscraper at an extreme loss because DPRK’s government refused to pay for it once it was completed. The French government therefore had to shoulder the entire cost of the project. Thus, it was Paris, not Pyongyang or some private company, which built this hotel for the North Korean capital.

Most of our tour group was placed on the 37th floor, but a few of us – including myself and my roommate and friend Emily – had a room on the 38th floor. Our room was hot. The hydroelectricity must all be directed to the Yanggakdo Hotel, because the rooms were boiling! There was a huge window with a great view of downtown Pyongyang highlighting the Juche Tower, May Day Stadium, and Kim Il Sung Square. But the window itself was creepy because there was no protective screen. Once you slid the large glass plate open, it was a steep drop down 38 floors. I don’t suffer from vertigo, but it made my legs shake. I was so impressed with our view that Emily was worried I would fall to my death trying to take the perfect picture.

We also had constant electricity, and many lamps and lights in our room. The bathroom was modern, with a strong showerhead, powerful toilet, and all the hotel amenities you could want. Our room featured a television with eight different channels (North Korea only has one channel, which, like everything else, is run and controlled by the state). Since this is a space for foreigners, foreign channels are allowed. All the channels were from either China or Russia; one channel had BBC International, but weirdly the sound was static and you could only watch the images on the screen. The only bit of news about the outside world that I could discern was that England's Prince William broke up with his long-time girlfriend Kate Middleton. That English royal scandal was my only contact with the outside world.

My hotel room’s view fascinated me. Not only was it a beautiful view, it was also shocking to see a metropolis descend into virtual darkness at nightfall. The darkness of a Pyongyang night was made all the more shocking by the silence. It is so dark that there might as well be no city there, and it is so quiet it might as well be the middle of nowhere! The only thing that could really be heard was the far-away engine of the one or two cars driving through the city, as you watched the headlights sway through the city’s blackness. Apparently you can hear a baby’s cry on certain nights, especially in the summer when people’s windows are open.

The North Korean government places all foreigners into this hotel. This creates an illusion that there are countless tourists visiting DPRK, when in reality there are less than 2000 foreigners a year in the country. Nevertheless, the illusion is impressive and the hotel was packed with foreigners. Since it was Mass Games time coupled with a special international friendship exhibition with former Eastern bloc countries, the hotel was jammed with visitors. Again, it ‘seemed’ like a lot, but in reality we would have been the only foreigners in the whole of North Korea. While we were there the hotel was crawling with Russians and many Central Asian countries. They were all performers and guests to the international friendship exhibition.