It speaks a lot about the cult of personality that Kim Il Sung started and which his son continued.
Lots of statues of the two of them everywhere, portraits of them to be hung in every home, everyone wears a Kim Il Sung badge.... It's not difficult for anyone who has lived all their life there to get brainwashed.
Something interesting: That hotel which was built and later abandoned in 1991 was actually built for the purpose of competing with the then-Westin Stamford Hotel in Singapore (now Swissotel-Stamford).
At that time, the Westin Stamford was the tallest hotel in the world, and that got the North Koreans green with envy as it was built by a South Korean company. So they decided to build the Ryugyong Hotel. If it had ever been completed it would have been the world's tallest hotel, and one of the largest buildings in the world.

More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel