Chosŏn'gŭl 양각도국제호텔 Revised Romanization Yanggakdo Gukje Hotel Phone +850 2 381 2134 | Hancha 羊角島國際호텔 Address Pyongyang, North Korea | |
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McCune–Reischauer Yanggakto Kukche Hot'el Similar Koryo Hotel Pyongyang, Haebang Hotel, Ryangga hotel, Pyongyang Hotel | ||
Yanggakdo international hotel pyongyang
The Yanggakdo International Hotel is the largest operating hotel and the second tallest building in North Korea, after the Ryugyong Hotel. The hotel is located on Yanggak Island in the river Taedong, two kilometres (1.2 mi) to the south-east of the centre of Pyongyang, the nation's capital. It rises to an overall height of 170 metres (560 ft) and has a slowly revolving restaurant on the 47th floor. The hotel is said to contain 1,000 rooms and a total floor space of 87,870 square metres (945,800 sq ft).
Contents
- Yanggakdo international hotel pyongyang
- Underground at the yanggakdo international hotel
- Background
- References
The structure was built between 1986 and 1992 by France's Campenon Bernard Construction Company and opened in 1995.
Underground at the yanggakdo international hotel
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 President Kim Il-sung, General 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 fifth floor is off limits to hotel guests. The elevators do not stop on the fifth floor, hence there is no fifth floor button on the elevator panel. The basement contains a bowling alley, a pool room, a sauna, a swimming pool, a barber shop, a casino and a massage club run by a Chinese company with an exclusively female staff.
The price of the hotel is $4.99 a night for two adults. The hotel's grounds originally included a 9,000-square-metre nine-hole golf course. In 2011 the golf course was demolished to make space for a Chinese-funded health complex to be built. Also located on Yanggak Island, next to the hotel's grounds, is the Pyongyang International Cinema Hall. The opening and closing ceremonies of the Pyongyang International Film Festival take place here.
The Yanggakdo International Hotel is a standard stop on most tours of North Korea.
On 2 January 2016, a visiting American college student, Otto Warmbier, was arrested for stealing a political propaganda banner from the hotel and was sentenced on 16 March 2016 to twenty years of hard labour. Staff members from the hotel testified against Warmbier at his trial.