"Phantom Hotel"

SEOUL, KOREA -- North Korea's phantom hotel is stirring back to life.

Once dubbed by Esquire magazine as "the worst building in the history of mankind," the 105-story Ryugyong Hotel is back under construction after a 16-year lull in the capital of one of the world's most reclusive and destitute countries.

According to foreign residents in Pyongyang, Egypt's Orascom group has recently begun refurbishing the top floors of the three-sided pyramid-shaped hotel whose 1,083 ft frame dominates the Pyongyang skyline.

The firm has put glass panels into the concrete shell, installed telecommunications antennas - even though the North forbids its citizens to own mobile phones - and put up an artist's impression of what it will look like.

The hotel consists of three wings rising at 75 degree angles capped by several floors arranged in rings supposed to hold five revolving restaurants and an observation deck