Huge North Korea pyramid hotel likely to open next year

Photo, released by Koryo Group, shows the pyramid-shaped, 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. A foreign tour agency said the interior of the massive, hotel in the North Korea capital remains unfinished. Beijing-based Koryo Tours got a sneak peek inside the hotel that has been an off-limits construction site and remains a source of fascination for the outside world. AP/KORYO GROUP

SEOUL, South Korea—International hotel operator Kempinski AG says it will manage a 105-story, pyramid-shaped hotel in Pyongyang that is expected to open next year.

Kempinski AG chief Reto Wittwer told a Seoul forum Thursday that the Ryugyong Hotel will open “partially, probably” in the middle of next year with shops, offices, ballrooms, restaurants and 150 rooms.

He says Cairo-based Orascom Telecom is funding the hotel. The firm launched a mobile network in North Korea in 2008.

North Korea began building the Ryugyong in the 1980s but stopped when funding ran out in the 1990s. The enormous hotel remains a source of fascination and ridicule for the outside world.

Wittwer says he initially thought that the hotel could eventually make a lot of money.