The 105-story Ryugyong Hotel has long been a blot on the Pyongyang skyline.
The world's tallest unoccupied building has towered over North Korea's capital since 1987, a grand but empty pyramid entirely dark except for the lone aircraft warning light at its top.
Outsiders saw the unfinished building as the epitome of failure, while people inside the country took care to rarely mention it at all.
That is, until light designer Kim Yong Il made the building once again the talk of the town.
In a brilliant flip of the script, the Ryugyong has been reborn as a symbol of pride and North Korean ingenuity.
For several hours each night, the building that doesn't have electricity inside becomes the backdrop of a massive light show in which more than 100,000 LEDs flash images of famous statues and monuments, bursts of fireworks, party symbols and political slogans.
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The Ryugyong is still unfinished. There's no public date when, or if, it will host its elusive first guest. Questions remain over whether the glass-and-concrete hotel is structurally sound.
And North Korea's electricity supply is limited as-is.
But never mind all that.
"I feel really proud," Kim, the vice department director of the Korean Light Decoration Center, told The Associated Press in a recent interview at the foot of the hotel.
"I made this magnificent design for this gigantic building and when people see it, it makes them feel good. It makes me proud to work as a designer."
The four-minute main program begins with an animation showing the history of the nation, followed by homages to ideals like self-reliance and revolutionary spirit and a procession of 17 political slogans such as "single-minded unity,"
''harmonious whole" and "100 battles, 100 victories."
"We can do the diagnostics on a laptop."