Ryugyong Hotel

Interesting and Secret Stuff UPDATED

This is the the Ryugyong Hotel in  North Korea's capital city of Pyongyang,  It's a real monument to the glory of Stalinist communism.  Construction began in 1987,  at an estimated cost of $750 million, or 2% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).  There are no windows, plumbing, or wiring nineteen years later.  It was so poorly engineered that it's literally sagging in the middle, and in danger of falling over.  Kim Jong Il is trying to lure foreign investors to pony up around $300 million to make some corrections.  I'm not making that up. Call your broker today. Anyway, this is all pretty much public, if underreported, knowledge.  Our media usually look for bright spots in islands of despair, like North Korea and Cuba, so maybe it's pure racism on their part that we've heard so little about the glory of  Kim's health care system.  Sorry, I was being snide, not to mention off-track.  There are reasons why a veil of secrecy has been placed over the Ryugyong Hotel.  A veil I am about to lift.  Slowly.  Sensuously.  Whoa. In 1994,  Clinton administration factotums were frozen at the helm after North Korean dictator Kim Sung Il announced he was taking his fuel rods out of storage, and going full throttle into nuclear development.  Privately, President Clinton asked Jimmy Carter to act as an intermediary, despite warnings that Jummy  was a loose cannon.  The White House said that Carter was acting on his own.  My bosses in the, er, import business were quite concerned that Carter might do something very foolish.  To that end I was parachuted into the Potong District of  Pyongyang the night before Carter arrived.  My instructions were to kill him if he tried to surrender the United States to the NorKs.  Posing as a street vendor selling Kimchi out of a goat cart just outside the meeting hall, I would be at-the-ready (my eyes were pulled back with Scotch Tape - hey,it works!).  The conference room had been bugged (still is as far as I know), and if a clear and present danger eventuated, I'd get a signal, and gain access by walking into the hall saying ''I have 6 order Kimchi for Dear Leader."  Once in, I'd spray the room.  Prolly would not have made it home, but that's the price of freedom. Of course that wasn't necessary.  All Carter gave away were a few billion dollars, a nuclear reactor, and 1000 videos for Sung's star struck son, Jong (now North Korea's megalomaniac-in-charge).  In my spare time I did some sight seeing, and was drawn to the Ryugyong Hotel.  You can't not be. It's the tallest building in the country.  What I discovered was astounding.  On close inspection, it's quite apparent that the building was never intended to be a hotel.  I took pictures;  this one was never handed over.  Now you know what we're dealing with.