Dennis Rodmanin heads to North Korea (again)

[Reashot Xigwin]

Dennis Rodman (C) makes his way through Beijing's international airport, on September 3, 2013 (AFP, Wang Zhao)

BEIJING — Former NBA star Dennis Rodman on Tuesday said he was heading back to Pyongyang to see his "friend", North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, but refused to say if he would come back with an imprisoned US citizen.

Korean-American Kenneth Bae, 44, has been held prisoner in the North since November, and Rodman had said last week that he might seek the man's release.

But speaking to reporters at Beijing airport en route to the North Korean capital, Rodman said "I did not promise anything" on Bae.

"I'm just going to meet my friend Kim the marshal to start a big basketball league going," Rodman said. "I'm just trying to keep the communication job going."

On a visit six months ago, the flamboyant Rodman declared himself a "friend for life" of the authoritarian leader and embraced him after the pair watched a basketball game together in Pyongyang.

Rodman faced ridicule from many US commentators over the trip, which came at a time of high tension over rocket launches and atomic tests by Kim's isolated regime.

The Swiss-educated Kim is reported to be a huge fan of basketball and the Chicago Bulls, with whom Rodman won three NBA titles alongside Michael Jordan in the 1990s.

Copyright © 2013 AFP. All rights reserved.

AFP: Dennis Rodman heads back to North Korea

More to come Pls like this post.

 

[Genesis]

well if Kim can be friends with Rodman, we should just give him what he wants cause he crazy.

 

[Reashot Xigwin]

Dennis Rodman returns to North Korea
Flamboyant former basketball star Dennis Rodman will arrive in Pyongyang today for a five-day visit to North Korea, his second this year, but has said he has no plans to negotiate the release of a jailed American missionary.

Kim Jong-Un with Dennis Rodman during a basketball game at the beginning of March Photo: EPA

By Reuters

3:12AM BST 03 Sep 2013

There had been speculation that Rodman, who met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in March, would secure the release of Kenneth Bae who was jailed for 15 years for trying to overthrow the North Korean government.

"I'm not going to North Korea to discuss freeing Kenneth Bae," Rodman told Reuters in a telephone interview. "I'm just going there on another basketball diplomacy tour."

Former basketball star Dennis Rodman waits to check in as he transits to Pyongyang at Beijing Capital International Airport (Reuters)

Kim, the third of his line to rule North Korea is a basketball fan and appeared to get on well with Rodman on the earlier visit, with the two of them pictured laughing, eating and drinking together and watching an all-star basketball match.

Rodman's latest trip is being sponsored by Irish bookmaker Paddy Power.

"I've come out here to see my friend (Kim) - and I want to talk about basketball," he added, speaking from Beijing, the usual transit point for flights into Pyongyang.

North Korea cancelled a visit by Robert King, US special envoy on North Korean human rights issues, to Pyongyang last week on what the US State Department said was a "humanitarian mission" to negotiate the release of Bae.

King's trip was initially seen as a signal that relations between Washington and Pyongyang might start to improve. North Korea said it withdrew the invitation because of annual military drills last week by the United States and South Korea.

Rodman drew fire for his earlier trip to Pyongyang at a time when North Korea was threatening the United States, South Korea and Japan with missile strikes.

He called Kim, 30, who rules unchallenged in a country where there are an estimated 150,000-200,000 prisoners in work camps, "an awesome kid".

Mr Bae, a Korean American who had been working as a Christian missionary in China and North Korea, was arrested in the northeast port city of Rason late last year.

The North Korean supreme court said it sentenced him to 15 years of hard labour for plotting to overthrow the state. It said he had secretly brought "propaganda materials", including a National Geographic documentary on life in North Korea, into the isolated country.

Mr Bae, who had trained with missionary organisation Youth With a Mission, ran a tour group called Nation Tours in China that specialised in trips to North Korea. In a video of a 2009 sermon to a Korean-American church in St. Louis, Mr Bae said he planned to bring fellow Christians into Rason.

North Korea says it permits religious freedom, but religious expression is tightly controlled in a state that acknowledges total loyalty to the Kim dynasty that has ruled for three generations. North Korea lands at the bottom of most independent surveys of freedom.

Mr Bae's family has acknowledged his deeply held religious beliefs but have suggested that his sympathy for North Korean orphans may have been behind his arrest.

Edited by Bonnie Malkin

Dennis Rodman returns to North Korea - Telegraph

My next post will be when Dennis Rodman touch NK.

 

[BigDaddyWatch]

Well, Dennis Rodman is back in North Korea again and is training a North Korean basketball team to play a exhibition match against a team made up of former NBA stars from America for Kim Jong Un's birthday. I wonder why Dennis Rodman is getting so much criticism for befriending Kim Jong Un.

You have to ask why non of the other celebrities in the US who's lining up to support and befriend Barack Obama is being scrutinized the same way ?

Here is a man that run's a regime that run's an Orwellian system that monitor's every aspect of its citizens lives through the electronic media and video camera's on the streets. And they are doing that beyond their own borders and even spy on citizens and leaders of other countries. A man who run's a country with more than 2 million people locked up in prisons for the most obscure reasons. No other country has a larger prison population then the US. A country that has been permanently at war for the past decade and has killed hundreds of thousand's of people abroad. Murder, rape and torture are common practise in its decade long wars. They use drones to violate other countries sovereignty and kill innocent people man, women, children's and bombs wedding parties and double tap emergency services that has come to help. Obama also run Guantanamo bay prison camp were people are being held for more than a decade without trial and have no prospect of release either. They lure the poor in the society to join the military with phony patriotism. And then send them to war over lies and obscure interest of the powers to be. While honoring these "heroes" publicly in anyway imaginable. But they at the same time allow hundreds of thousand's of their veteran's to fall into mental illness, alcoholism, poverty, drug abuse and homelessness. There are now today more soldiers dying as a result of suicide than in combat. All of that is happening today without the leaders or the public in the US batting an eyelid about it.

Of course American trashheads here will say that Barack Obama is elected, but then again so was Hitler. I mean do you really believe that Obama was elected because of his merits and abilities ? He has gathered more than a billion dollars for the 2008 campaign and another billion dollars plus for the 2012 campaign. and not to mention an army of spin doctors and media consultants. You really think that money came from college students and ther grandparents donating a few hundred bucks here and twenty bucks there ? All Obama did in 2008 was stand on a podium and shake his fist a shout Hope, Change and Yes, we can! And after he came to power he is out of the loop about spying on foreign leaders by his own intelligence agencies, the horrific website of Obamacare and doesn't seems to know what the national debt is. Now i'm not one for conspiracy theories but perhabs those conspiracy mongers out there talking about a shadowy force behind the scenes that is the real power in America may have a point.