Dennis Rodman goes to North Korea on “peace mission” (courtesy of HBO)
Rodman, three members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, and a film crew from Vice media company are visiting the communist country to shoot footage for a TV show set to air on HBO in early April, Vice told the Associated Press before the group’s departure from Beijing.
It’s the second high-profile US visit this year to North Korea, a country with which it remains in a state of war. The visit comes two weeks after North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test in defiance of UN bans against atomic and missile activity. […]
Vice said the Americans hoped to engage in a little “basketball diplomacy” in North Korea by running a sports camp for children and playing games with locals – and by competing alongside North Korea’s top athletes in an exhibition match they hope will be attended by leader Kim Jong-un. […]
Promoting technology and sports are two major policy priorities of Kim Jong-un, who took power in December 2011 following the death of his father, Kim Jong-il.
But the flamboyant Rodman, with his maze of tattoos, nose studs and neon-bleached hair, seems an unlikely diplomat to be sent to a country where male fashion rarely ventures beyond military khaki and growing facial hair is forbidden.
During his heyday in the 1990s, Rodman was a poster boy for excess. He called his 1996 autobiography Bad as I Wanna Be – and showed up wearing a wedding dress to promote it.
If you don’t know who Dennis Rodman is just go to this link for his bio. I can’t think of a “better” self-appointed ambassador to North Korea, can you? Somehow, I suspect this will be good news for John McCain.
