The Yanggakdo International Hotel is the largest operating hotel in North Korea, pending the completion of the Ryugyong Hotel, and the country's tenth-tallest building. The hotel is located on Yanggak Island in the River Taedong, to the south-east of the centre of Pyongyang, the nation's capital. It rises to an overall height of and has a slowly revolving restaurant on the 47th floor.

This hotel is North Korea's first luxury hotel. The structure was built between 1986 and 1992 by France's Campenon Bernard Construction Company and opened in 1996.

Background

Besides housing the reception, the ground floor offers the purchase of North Korean currency sets, postcards and letters, and basic commodities at Western prices. There is a bar and a bookshop which stocks North Korean reading material including treatises of former leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

In addition to the revolving restaurant, the hotel guide issued to guests indicates that the hotel contains four further restaurants on the second floor: dining-rooms one and two, the main banquet hall, and the Japanese, Chinese and Korean food dining-rooms.

The basement contains a bowling alley, Also located on Yanggak Island, next to the hotel's grounds, is the Pyongyang International Cinema Hall,

Fifth floor

The fifth floor of the hotel has been a source of curiosity among foreigners because it is off-limits to hotel guests and there is no fifth-floor button on the elevator panels. Tourists have also reported seeing alleged surveillance equipment apparently used to observe guests' rooms. One Western travel agency specialising in tours of North Korea has described the fifth floor as "actually just a service level much like would be found in any hotel, and strictly off limits to tourists."

Otto Warmbier incident

On 2 January 2016, a visiting American university student, Otto Warmbier, was arrested on a charge of attempting to steal a political propaganda banner from a restricted area of the hotel. Although some media reports speculated that the incident had occurred on the hotel's fifth floor, Warmbier indicated in a confession that he took down the banner from a staff-only area of the second floor of the hotel, but abandoned the item after discovering it was too large to carry away.

Staff members from the hotel testified against Warmbier at his trial. On 16 March 2016, Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment with hard labor. After seventeen months in captivity, it was revealed that Warmbier had suffered severe brain damage, and he was brought back to the United States in June 2017, dying six days later.

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File:Dprk-hotel-yanggakdo.jpg|The hotel's facade seen from the ground level

File:Yanggakdo-Hotel-Lobby-2014.jpg|Hotel lobby area, March 2014

File:The Taedong River in Pyongyang.jpg|The hotel seen from the top of the Juche Tower

File:Yanggakdo International Hotel front side by night.jpg|Front side of the hotel

File:Yanggakdo International Hotel room 1.jpg|Standard-sized twin room

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See also

  • Koryo Hotel
  • Ryugyong Hotel
  • List of hotels in North Korea

References

  • Official website
  • The hotel's promotional video, recorded by a guest in August 2011:
  • Yanggakdo International Hotel picture album at Naenara