WI The Ryugyong Hotel Was Completed

The Ryugyong Hotel was a hotel that was being built in North Korea in the late 1980's. Let's say that instead of NK's government ceasing construction over financial problems, the government continues building it. So it would be built in time for the World Festival of Youth and Students that took place in 1989.

Its obvious that if construction on this building finishes, North Korea will have less money and so the North Korean famine in 1995 will be considerably worse. How would this affect other things? If the hotel was built in 1989 it would have been the largest hotel in the world. Would there be more tourists in Pyongyang? How would this affect North Korea's standing in the world?
 
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It would probably be empty.:rolleyes:

Not if you take Pyongyang's word for it. It would probably have records and PA systems hooked up to give the impression that people are in it, and build a power station just for the purpose of keeping parts of it lit at night (and this "occupied") even if much of the rest of the capital doesn't have power.
 

The Sandman

Banned
It would probably have collapsed messily due to slipshod construction, lack of decent materials, and rampant corruption at every point in the building process.

If we got really lucky, the collapse might somehow have killed the Dear Leader and his closest cronies in the process.
 
It would probably have collapsed messily due to slipshod construction, lack of decent materials, and rampant corruption at every point in the building process.

If we got really lucky, the collapse might somehow have killed the Dear Leader and his closest cronies in the process.

There was corruption? I wasn't aware of that... After all it is North Korea, the only one who could afford to be corrupt is the Dear Leader.
 

The Sandman

Banned
There was corruption? I wasn't aware of that... After all it is North Korea, the only one who could afford to be corrupt is the Dear Leader.

I'd find it harder to believe that there wasn't corruption. All that a massive state security apparatus means is that your profit margin on the corruption goes down because you have to bribe the secret police to keep things secret.
 
I don't think that North Korea has the ability to build the thing, to be honest. And besides that, what is the point? North Korea gets very few tourists (not hard to see why) and the building is so mammoth that it would be out of place in Tokyo or Seoul.
 

Hendryk

Banned
It could have been used as Party headquarters. That would be Orwellian in a totally non-ironic way.

ryugyong-hotel.jpg
 
I don't think that North Korea has the ability to build the thing, to be honest. And besides that, what is the point? North Korea gets very few tourists (not hard to see why) and the building is so mammoth that it would be out of place in Tokyo or Seoul.

But North Korea does have the stuff to build the thing. The project cost 2% of North Korea's GDP. Let's say they spent enough money to make it cost 10% of the GDP. It would take away from other things, but the building would get built from imported supplies.
 
The obvious example is Romania. Perhaps the PoD is really no (or say a mid 90s) Soviet collapse. Large butterflies, but that has to be the best way to get the outcome.
 
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