Infamously ugly and unfinished, the shell of the Ryugyong Hotel dominates North Korea's capital, Pyongyang. But work on the skyscraper began again last summer after a 16-year hiatus and, as the company behind it tells the BBC's Matthew Davis, an end may finally be in sight.

A three-sided pyramid with walls that jag upwards at 75 degrees, capped by a series of concentric rings, the Ryugyong Hotel was described by one magazine simply as "the worst building in the history of mankind".

Other names that have stuck down the years include The Hotel of Doom and The Phantom Hotel - references to the fact that for the best part of two decades, all work on the 105-storey skyscraper was halted as North Korea's economy nosedived.

Conceived as a grandiose projection of emerging wealth, the hotel instead became a symbol of North Korea's hubris and of the state's failing financial system.