Dennis Rodman Back In North Korea
In other news of international diplomacy, the exceedingly strange Dennis Rodman is once again hanging out in North Korea:
HONG KONG — The former basketball star Dennis Rodman returned Tuesday to North Korea, where he plans “to see my friend” Kim Jong-un, the dictator whose country until recently was threatening to annihilate the United States with nuclear weapons.
Mr. Rodman said in Beijing that he was planning a five-day visit to the North but played down speculation that he would try to secure the release of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American Christian missionary who has been jailed there since late last year after being detained on North Korean soil.
“I’m not going to North Korea to discuss freeing Kenneth Bae,” Mr. Rodman, a Basketball Hall of Fame member, told Reuters in a telephone interview. “I’m just going there on another basketball diplomacy tour.”
His visit comes amid a thaw in relations between North and South Korea, sworn enemies that just months ago appeared to be on the brink of military conflict.
Mr. Rodman’s last trip to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, was sponsored by Vice Media, and he drew wide criticism for cozying up to a government with a long record of human rights abuses. This time, he said his trip was being sponsored by Paddy Power, an Irish gambling operation. After Mr. Rodman’s first North Korea trip, Paddy Power sent Mr. Rodman to Vatican City to urge people to place their bets on a new pope.
But Mr. Rodman said this trip to see Mr. Kim was all about friendship — and sports.
“I’ve come out here to see my friend,” he said in an allusion to the dictator. “I want to talk about basketball.”
What could possibly go wrong?
I think your description is 100% on the money: “exceedingly strange Dennis Rodman.” Considering that Kim Jong-Un can also be described that way, maybe we should just chalk this up to the First Law of Anomalous Attraction: “Weird people associate with other weird people.”
Yes, now I actually can imagine Carmen Electra as the First Lady of North Korea.
Rodman might wish to learn from the mistakes of others. Just recently, it was shown that even if he’s willing to get in bed with North Korea, that might not keep him from being machine gunned down in the end.
@JKB:
This is Dennis Rodman here, not a sane person.
Just got done reading “Inside Camp 14” – Dennis, if he can read, should read it over before he visits his good friend again.
@Mike: that should read “Escape from Camp 14”