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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Screw SL" data-source="post: 14770031" data-attributes="member: 455444">Swiss Kempinski ditches N.Korea 'Hotel of Doom' project AFP April 10, 2013   First Published: 12:42 IST(10/4/2013                                                     <img src="http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/2013/4/9093c9a1-079b-4469-a2e4-0c17727c34a1HiRes.JPG" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />Swiss  luxury hotel chain Kempinski said on Tuesday that it was dropping plans  to open a hotel in the pyramid-shaped structure. Photo: AFP / Koryo  Tours                                             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. "Kempinski Hotels confirms that KEY International, its joint                                                                                                venture partner in China with Beijing Tourism Group (BTG), had initial  discussions to operate a hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea," Brigitte Hohl  Taylor, a spokeswoman told AFP in an email. "However no agreement has been signed since market entry is not  currently possible," she said, adding in a phone conversation that the  discussions had been halted. In November, the Geneva-based luxury hotel chain said it hoped to  open Pyongyang's 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel -- a monolithic concrete  shell dubbed the "Hotel of Doom" by international media that has been  repeatedly delayed -- 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. The Korean peninsula has been locked in a cycle of escalating  military tensions since the North's third nuclear test in February,  which drew toughened UN sanctions. Former North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, who died in December 2011,  reportedly ordered construction of the Ryugyong hotel in 1987, initially  with skills and capital from a French company. In 2008 the project, which has stood as a symbol of the economic  problems plaguing the impoverished country, was named the 'Worst  Building in the History of Mankind' by US men's lifestyle magazine  Esquire.</blockquote>

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