For a project that first got underway in the eighties, it’s rather shocking that—all these decades later—the inside of the Ryugyong is so eerily abandoned.

For most of the hotel’s unfinished lifespan, observers could only guess at what work might have been done on the interiors, but that all changed in 2012 when a report by NK News revealed a series of creepy photographs showing that, if the hotel ever were to open, there was still a lot of work to do. It seems that every room inside the Ryugyong is barren. Concrete stairs lead to undecorated windows, would-be meeting spaces are empty, and other signs of unrealized ambition are everywhere. According to CNN, the only working elevator that moves between all 99 floors is an old fashioned service elevator, requiring a human lift operator to be present: One presumes that, on most days, said operator isn’t there, since there’s usually nobody inside the building. The small batch of revealing photos the world has today were taken by Simon Cockerell, a manager at the Beijing-based company Koryo Group, who was only allowed inside as a birthday gift. (Weird choice of present, but whatever.)

Ghostliness aside, all the work done to the hotel’s innards show a construction project that, on multiple occasions, had seemed on the way to completion … only for something to go horribly wrong.

Unfortunately for North Korea, their big plans got roadblocked by that all too mundane — but terrifying — opponent, a dwindling bank account. According to the New York Times, the nation was already struggling to afford all the massive infrastructure projects, and while the big Pyongyang festival did make it through the gates (with an incomplete tower), what was supposed to be a victorious opening statement instead become a dire warning of what was soon to come: within a few years, the Soviet Union collapsed, thereby lopping off North Korea’s prime source of economic aid. Around the same time, North Korea’s agricultural industry was pummeled by floods, droughts, and other climate catastrophes. Famine struck, and most of the country soon found itself starving for basic necessities like food and water. Horrifyingly massive swaths of the North Korean population died from starvation, rendering moot any enthusiasm for any more ambitious projects like the World Festival of Youth and Students.

And in the middle of it all, ominously, stood the Ryugyong.

Though the hotel’s construction sailed right past its original 1989 opening date, according to Atlas Obscura, work on the project kept plugging away until the onset of famine in the nineties. Between funding issues and electrical shortages, the expensive hotel—at this point, it had cost about $750 million USD — no longer seemed so important, even though work on the external structure had been completed. The project was canned in 1992, and construction crews sent home.

Suddenly, in 2008, the buzzing sounds of construction equipment filled the streets of Pyongyang. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, new apartments and office structures rose into the sky. Tram lines were replaced. Theaters went up. Old structures were modernized, in a bid for tourism. And most impressive of all, the Hotel of Doom transformed from abandoned ghost tower into, once again, an active project. 

Gleaming glass panels were installed all over the Ryugyong, according to the BBC, turning the infamous eyesore into the futuristic, spaceship-like structure it is today. There were some rather pertinent questions regarding how North Korea was paying for this whole shebang—even though the country claimed to be funding its own renovation efforts, their economy was still recovering from those deathly famines in the nineties—but nonetheless, construction efforts moved forward quickly. The publicly proclaimed goal was to have the Ryugyong Hotel finally complete and open for business by April 15th, 2012, for the 100th anniversary celebration of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the “eternal president” and founding leader of North Korea.

More years of emptiness went by, but in December of 2016, signs of activity lit up the Hotel of Doom once again. Literally.

Though rumors of the Ryugyong Hotel opening for business have always come and gone, the first major indicator that something might truly be happening, according to the Telegraph, was when there was a report of a light spotted inside the hotel. That’s a big deal, for a building with no electricity. No further revelations came until a year later, when a series of satellite images showed that cranes and building trucks were parked and roaming around the building, presumably getting to work. Meanwhile, tourists who visited North Korea claimed that their tour guides were boasting that the hotel would soon open offices or public exhibits in the near future. 

The forward motion was undeniable, for a project that had been DOA so many times, but media responses were muted. Was the Hotel of Doom finally getting off the ground … at least, in a small way? Or was this yet another false start? What came next, admittedly, wasn’t what anyone expected.

On June 24th, 2019, a young Australian man named Alek Sigley tweeted the above two images, showing that new signage had been erected outside the hotel’s doors. What happened next was horrifying. 

Three days later, Sigley vanished into thin air. His family were unable to get a hold of him via Whatsapp, according to News.com,au, and the Guardian reported that his friends couldn’t reach him on Skype. Sigley, at the time, was rooted to North Korea in multiple ways: not only had he married his Japanese-born wife in Pyongygang, but he was also a student at the local university, and the founder of the North Korean tour group Tongil Yours. He was believed to be the only Australian living in North Korea.

Soon, it became apparent that Sigley had been detained by the North Korean authorities, for unclear reasons. His loved ones were terrified that he may have suffered the same fate as Otto Warmbier—the 22-year-old American tourist who was imprisoned by the North Korean government in 2016, and released a 18 months later with severe brain damage—but thankfully, Sigley was released from imprisonment only a week later. He flew to Beijing, followed by Tokyo, leaving North Korea behind. When Sigley was inquired about what had happened to him during the seven days he was detained, he said through a spokesperson that he intends to never discuss it, and would prefer that the media respect his right to privacy.