Dennis Rodman serenades ‘friend for life’ Kim Jong-un; apologizes for obscenity-laced interview

2014-01-10

By Martin Sieff

ormer U.S. basketball superstar Dennis Rodman not only led other NBA players in a special exhibition game in North Korea on Jan. 8, to celebrate the birthday of his “friend for life” Kim Jong-un, he also sang happy birthday to the repressive dictator.

Kim is believed to have turned 31 and is celebrating the event as reports circulate that his aunt Kim Kyong-hui, 68, has committed suicide or died of a heart attack following the execution last month of her husband Jang Sung-taek on the young leader’s orders.

Long notorious for his cross-dressing and other outrageous antics, Rodman made clear he cared nothing for such reports or for Kim Jong-un’s well-documented record of mass executions, and enslavement of scores of thousands of his own citizens ingulag-style concentration camps.

Rodman, 52, who played on five National Basketball Association championship teams in the 1990s, became loudly abusive when interviewed on CNN on Jan. 7 about his fourth visit within a year to reclusive North Korea, the most closed society on the planet.

Interviewed from Pyongyang, he defended Kim Jong-un, telling the network’s Chris Cuomo, “I love my friend. This is my friend.”

In the past, Rodman had boasted that he would raise the issue of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American and U.S. citizen who has been jailed in North Korea.

Rodman belligerent during interview

Rodman lost his temper with Cuomo and became defensive and abusive when asked if he would raise Bae’s plight during his visit.

“Kenneth Bae did one thing. ... If you understand what Kenneth Bae did. Do you understand what he did in this country? No, no, no, you tell me, you tell me. Why is he held captive here in this country, why? ... I would love to speak on this,” he claimed in increasingly confused comments.

Bae, a father of three, was arrested in November 2012 and sentenced last May to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea on charges of “hostile acts” and accusations that he tried to topple the government.

Bae’s sister, Terry Chung, later told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the family was “shocked and just outraged” by Rodman’s comments.

Referring to the team of retired basketball players he had recruited to play in the Pyongyang game, Rodman said, “You know, you’ve got 10 guys here, 10 guys here, they’ve left their families, they’ve left their damn families, to help this country, as in a sports venture. That’s 10 guys, all these guys here, do anyone understand that? Christmas, New Year’s. ... “I don’t give a rat’s ass what the hell you think. I’m saying to you, look at these guys here, look at them ... they dared to do one thing, they came here.”

Before departing from Beijing on the last leg of his flight, Rodman informed reporters at the airport, while holding a bottle of Carlsberg beer, that he would not discuss North Korea’s appalling human rights record with his host. Instead, he defended Kim Jong-un as a “good guy” and a “friend,” South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported on Jan. 8.

Two days after the CNN interview, Rodman released a statement apologizing to Bae’s family and Cuomo as well as Rodman’s teammates and management for the comments he made in the interview, blaming alcohol and stress.

“I want to apologize. … I take full responsibility for my actions. It had been a very stressful day. Some of my teammates were leaving because of pressure from their families and business associates. My dreams of basketball diplomacy was quickly falling apart. I had been drinking. It’s not an excuse but by the time the interview happened I was upset. I was overwhelmed. It’s not an excuse, it’s just the truth,” he said in the statement.

Rodman, widely regarded as a colorful has-been in his native United States, is increasing the frequency of his visits to Kim. The latest trip follows one in December to train North Korean basketball players.

“People always say that North Korea is like a really communist country, that people are not allowed to go there. I just know the fact that, you know, to me he’s a nice guy, to me. Nice guy, you know. Whatever he does political-wise, that’s not my job,” theChosun Ilbo quoted him as saying.

Kim’s actions departure from father’s rule

Kim has been a spectacular and highly unpredictable departure from the carefully shielded and orchestrated formal reverence required by his father Kim Jong-il and grandfather Kim Il-sung during the 66 years they ruled North Korea from September 1945 to December 2011. But even by his standards of alternating jovial extroversion and bonhomie with ferocious public executions, his public presentation of his friendship with Rodman has been unprecedented, and some experts believe it may be damaging his public standing.

“The behavior of young North Korean leader has already raised many eyebrows. It suffices to mention his marriage to Ri Sol-ju, a girl with a bohemian past, or his strange affection for Dennis Rodman, an eccentric athlete who did not bother to take off his cap in front of the Leader,” Tatiana Gabroussenko, professor of North Korean studies at Korea University, pointed out in an article in Asia Times Online in December.

Ralph Winnie, vice president of the Eurasian Business Coalition, told the Asia Pacific Defense Forum [APDF] that Kim appeared to have a rational motive in part for his public hosting and adulation of Rodman.

“He has used Rodman to try and showcase the new tourism and ski resorts he has built. Apparently he believes North Korea can generate needed hard currency from attracting foreign visitors to these outlets though the amount of revenue he would raise appears to be minimal at best,” Winnie said. “But there seems no doubt that his affection for Rodman and pleasure in his company is genuine.”

Media reported Rodman went skiing in North Korea the day after the exhibition game. One former NBA player who participated in the exhibition, Charles Smith, left North Korea after blaming Rodman for tainting efforts by the others to bring diplomacy to the country.

Rodman paid his first visit to North Korea last February when Kim was on the receiving end of unprecedented international isolation after carrying out the country’s third underground nuclear test in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolutions.

During that visit, Rodman, began what CNN described as “an unlikely friendship” with Kim when the athlete led a group of Harlem Globetrotters for an exhibition basketball game attended by Kim.

The U.S. government has distanced itself from Rodman’s visit. CNN reported that White House spokesman Jay Carney described Rodman as taking a private trip. The Obama administration has called for Bae’s release in the past “and our views about Kenneth Bae have not changed,” Carney said.

After Kim ordered his uncle, veteran statesman Jang Sung-taek, executed, international criticism caused Paddy Power, the online betting company that had backed Rodman’s exhibition trip, to pull out of the project.