The Swiss luxury hotel chain Kempinski said on Tuesday that it was dropping plans to open a huge pyramid-shaped hotel that has stood half-built for decades in North Korea amid escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula.
In November, the Geneva-based luxury hotel chain said it hoped to open Pyongyang’s 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel in July or August this year. But on Sunday, the South China Morning Post reported that the Swiss company had decided to ditch the project amid the increasingly bellicose rhetoric from the North Korean regime.
Former North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il reportedly ordered construction of the Ryugyong hotel in 1987, initially with skills and capital from a French company.
