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    North Korea’s biggest hotel has a fake floor for surveillance, a revolving restaurant on the top, prostitutes, and you can die for stealing a poster


    North Korea’s biggest hotel has a fake floor for surveillance, a revolving restaurant on the top, prostitutes, and you can die for stealing a poster

    by fan_tas_tic

    View 30 Comments

    30 Comments

    1. fan_tas_tic on

      Yanggakdo International Hotel has 47 stories on an island in Pyongyang, with 1,001 rooms.
      – The 5th floor doesn’t exist on the elevator buttons. That floor apparently has surveillance monitors showing hotel rooms and anti-American propaganda posters everywhere.
      – There’s a Chinese-run casino in the basement that’s open until 5am and is one of the only places in North Korea with WiFi (but you have to be gambling to use it).
      The hotel also has prostitutes for about $100, a revolving restaurant on top, and you can bowl in your street shoes while staff manually reset the pins.
      – An American student named Otto Warmbier was arrested here in 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster and died after being returned to the US in a coma. The whole place is basically a tourist prison, where you are kept on an island to make surveillance easier. [Here are some more photos and details.](https://www.uniqhotels.com/blog/yanggakdo-international-hotel/)

    5. Asrahn on

      Gotta pump up those anti-NK post numbers in the face of the Epstein file stuff, wouldn’t want people to focus too much on the latter

    9. 666dollarfootlong on

      You genuinely think he stole the poster? He was straight up framed and used as a political prisoner. No doubt about it

    17. partner_fartner on

      Dawg that’s just like…all hotels?

      Every hotel I’ve ever been in has a security floor.

      Every hotel I’ve ever been in has a weird ass restaurant.

      Every hotel I’ve ever been in has sex workers.

      Every hotel I’ve ever been in will have you arrested if you trespass and rip shit off the walls.

      And people, tragically, die in prisons all over the world. He didn’t deserve to die for what happened, I’m not arguing that. But it’s not a uniquely DPRK phenomena. Shit I’d be willing to bet more people die in 99% of Western prisons every year than they do in DPRK prisons.

      Honestly, making any of these seem as if they are some sort of unique, DPRK-exclusive phenomenon is clearly a bad faith argument and just blatant orientalism and xenophobia.

      E: I didn’t like my use of “prostitutes” so I changed it.

    19. yingdong on

      I stayed there back in 2012. In the lobby there were giant tanks with shark-like fish in them. We got hammered in the bar next to the lobby on the local soju and beer (Taedonggang beer is great). Then I ended up at the casino in the basement playing blackjack. I won like $150.

      I also went looking for the famous floor that’s missing from the elevator. Found it and there was nothing there but banners on the walls. Good job I didn’t decide drunkenly to take one!

    25. billlloyd on

      The Leningrad Intourist hotel where I stayed in 1985 was similar, with prostitutes everywhere.

    26. Bitter_Argument2574 on

      Prostitutes are a nice touch. You need something to add a little character to that place.

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