Rodman serenades North Korean leader for birthday; family of US captive 'outraged'-video

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The sister of an American held captive in North Korea for more than a year said Wednesday she is outraged that Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star who has cozied up to North Korea’s young dictator, is “playing games with my brother’s life.” Rodman on Wednesday led a crowd at a North Korean auditorium in serenading the leader, Kim Jong Un, with “Happy Birthday” at an exhibition game between former NBA players and a North Korean team. A day earlier, in a bizarre, expletive-littered and sometimes incoherent interview with CNN, Rodman came close to suggesting that the American, Kenneth Bae, was responsible for his captivity. Advertise | AdChoices “My family and I are outraged,” Bae’s sister Terri Chung said in a statement. “He is playing games with my brother’s life. There is no diplomacy, only games, and at my brother’s expense.”

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U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki talks about former NBA star Dennis Rodman's trip to North Korea and his comments about American Kenneth Bae, who is being held in a North Korean prison.

Rodman Explodes At CNN Over North Korea Trip, Implies American Prisoner Is Guilty

Here's good example of why Dennis Rodman shouldn't be traveling to North Korea as a representative for any cause as he seems to care about the ongoing human rights crises in North Korea.

On Tuesday, CNN host Chris Cuomo asked Rodman and the other former NBA stars assembled whether they would speak to Kim about the imprisonment of American citizen Kenneth Bae. Rodman did not take the question well.
“The one thing about politics, Kenneth Bae did one thing. If you understand — if you understand what Kenneth Bae did,” Rodman started, waving off former New York Knicks player Charles D. Smith who had been serving as spokesman for the group. “Do you understand what he did? In this country?” When Cuomo asked for Rodman to clarify precisely what crime Bae had commit — which the North Korean government has yet to do — Rodman instead chose to speak about the important cultural diplomacy he and his fellows were undertaking.
“I would love to speak on this,” Rodman yelled. “You’ve got ten guys here — ten guys here, that have left their families — left their damn families to help this country as a sports venture. You got all these guys here. Does anyone understand that?”
When Cuomo tried to turn the line of conversation back to Bae, the former Chicago Bull exploded. “I don’t give a [expletive]!” he shouted. “I don’t give a rats ass what the hell you think! I’m saying to you look at these guys! Look at them! They came here!”

Dennis Rodman back in North Korea

Basketball star leads entourage of former NBA players for exhibition game to mark birthday of ruler Kim Jong-un

One has to ask is Dennis Rodman this naive about the situation in North Korea not just with its plethora of human rights abuses but its failed economy and deprivation faced by its citizens?  When looking at pictures released by the government you see people who healthy and seemingly happy what of those hidden from the cameras. Who face starvation and repression because they for reasons only known to the government are accused of crimes against the state.  Crimes which exist only the minds of those with the authority to make them up.   

Rodman claims that he's doing this so as to hopefully bring the two nations together.  

     Rodman travelled to Pyongyang, the capital, via Beijing with a squad of a dozen former basketball stars including Vin Baker and Cliff Robinson in what he calls "basketball diplomacy", although US officials have criticised his efforts."It's about trying to connect two countries together in the world, to let people know that: do you know what? Not every country in the world is that bad, especially North Korea," Rodman said in Beijing before his flight to North Korea.
"People say so many negative things about North Korea. And I want people in the world to see it's not that bad."

Its time for Dennis Rodman to wake up to the realities of North Korea and ask himself does he really want to be associated with a world leader who imprisons 10's of thousands of its citizens and not just those accused of the crime but their entire extended family.

Defectors have repeatedly testified about the North Korean government's alleged use of indiscriminate killings, rapes, beatings and prison camps holding as many as 120,000 people deemed opponents of authoritarian leader Kim Jong-un, the third generation of his family to rule. Rodman has been criticised for his steadfast refusal to use his trips as an opportunity to discuss these issues.

Dennis Rodman Returns to North Korea

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman is once again traveling to North Korea to meet with his friend Kim-Jong un and help coach the North Korean National Basketball Team.   Rodman's visit comes less than a week after North Korea announced the arrest, trial, conviction and execution of Kim-Jong un's  uncle Jang-Song theak.  

Rodman was asked about the current situation in North Korea:

Rodman told reporters at Beijing airport that he was not going to talk about politics or human rights, but he expected to meet Kim and arrange an international tournament in Pyongyang on 8 January to mark the leader's birthday.

Rodman told Reuters: "It has nothing to do with me. I mean, whatever his uncle has done, and whoever's done anything in North Korea, I have no control over that. I mean, these things have been going on for years and years and years. I'm just going over there to do a basketball game and have some fun."

He is friends with the leader of one of the most repressive governments in the world and its continuous abuse of its citizens human rights has nothing to do with him.  Rodman is obviously living in some kind of dream world of his own construct what else could explain his complete denial  of the situation in that country.


      Rodman said it was not his place to talk about such issues. "People have been saying these things here and there. It doesn't really matter to me. I'm not a politician. I'm not an ambassador," he said.

Your certainly not an ambassador or a politician.  You are however a human being and shouldn't be providing propaganda for the North Korean government and cover for its human  rights abuses.    

How Dennis Rodman can help the North Korean people

By Shin Dong-hyuk, Published: December 18

Shin Dong-hyuk is a human rights activist and the only person born in a North Korean labor camp known to have escaped to the West.

Dear Mr. Rodman:

I have never met you, and until you visited North Korea in February I had never heard of you. Now I know very well that you are a famous, retired American basketball player with many tattoos. I also understand that you are returning this week to North Korea to coach basketball and perhaps visit for the third time with the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un,who has become your friend.

I want to tell you about myself. I was born in 1982 in Camp 14, a political prison in the mountains of North Korea. For more than 50 years, Kim Jong Un, his father and his grandfather have used prisons such as Camp 14 to punish, starve and work to death people who the regime decides are a threat. Prisoners are sent to places like Camp 14 without trial and in secret. A prisoner’s “crime” can be his relation by blood to someone the regime believes is a wrongdoer or wrong-thinker. My crime was to be born as the son of a man whose brother fled to South Korea in the 1950s.

You can see satellite pictures of Camp 14 and four other labor camps on your smartphone. At this very moment, people are starving in these camps. Others are being beaten, and someone soon will be publicly executed as a lesson to other prisoners to work hard and obey the rules. I grew up watching these executions, including the hanging of my mother.

On orders of the guards in Camp 14, inmates are forced to marry and create children to be raised by guards to be disposable slaves. Until I escaped in 2005, I was one of those slaves. My body is covered with scars from torture I endured in the camp.

Mr. Rodman, if you want to know more about me, I will send you a book about my life, “Escape From Camp 14.” Along with the stories of many other camp survivors, my story helped persuade the United Nations to create a commission of inquiry that is now investigating human rights atrocities in my country. I was “witness number one.” In the coming year, the commission’s findings may force the U.N. Security Council to decide whether to approve a trial in the International Criminal Court of the Kim family and other North Korean officials for crimes against humanity.

Dennis Rodman Isn't a Diplomat:

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Ignoring the sanctions levied against North Korea for their continued pursuit of a nuclear weapons program, shrugging off the hundreds of thousands in harsh prison camps and oblivious to the issues of starvation, famine and hardship suffered by the ordinary North Koreans, Dennis Rodman tells ABC television This Week host George Stephanopoulos these persuasive words:

Rodman said Kim told him that he would like for Obama to call him so they could talk and also noted that both men like basketball, suggesting it could be a conversation-starter. At the end of the interview, Stephanopoulos presented Rodman with a study from Human Rights Watch about human rights abuses in North Korea. Rodman responded: “Well either way, either way — guess what, though — guess what — thank you for the report. Guess what, guess what, don’t hate me. Don’t hate me. Guess what. Don’t hate me. Guess what. Don’t hate me.”

After all Dennis Rodman is Kim-Jong un's newest BFF and they just want to talk basketball.

Dennis Rodman's new friend: Kim-Jong un (Updated)

Let's face it Dennis Rodman is beyond stupid.  How could not after making this statement

Leaving NKorea, Rodman calls Kims 'great leaders'

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Ending his unexpected round of basketball diplomacy in North Korea on Friday, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman called leader Kim Jong Un an "awesome guy" and said his father and grandfather were "great leaders."

Rodman, the highest-profile American to meet Kim since he inherited power from father Kim Jong Il in 2011, watched a basketball game with the authoritarian leader Thursday and later drank and dined on sushi with him.

At Pyongyang's Sunan airport on his way to Beijing, Rodman said it was "amazing" that the North Koreans were "so honest." He added that Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founder, "were great leaders."

Dennis Rodman maybe a former NBA player and winner of 5 championships but that does not excuse his sudden "love" for all things Kim-Jong un.

Kim-Jung un is a third generation dictator of North Korea whose policies are not meant to benefit that nations citizenry but its military.

During the 1990's millions of North Koreans starved to death after they suffered a devastating series of natural disasters.  While most national governments would under these dire circumstances give aid to its citizens, then leader Kim-Jong il did just the opposite continuing to funnel its scarce financial resources to the military.

Kim-Jung un's government has standing orders for its military and boarder guards to shoot anyone who tries to escape to China and for those who do make it  but are subsequently captured they are forcibly repatriated by the Chinese government where their is execution awaiting them along with the imprisonment of their entire family in a North Korean gulag.

Does Dennis Rodman care?  Of course not he gets to hang with a dictator and discuss the Chicago Bulls teams from the 90's which won 3 NBA championships .

"You have a friend for life," Rodman told Kim before a crowd of thousands at a gymnasium where they sat side by side, chatting as they watched players from North Korea and the U.S. play on mixed teams, Alex Detrick, a spokesman for the New York-based VICE media company, told The Associated Press.

[…]

The unlikely encounter makes Rodman the most high-profile American to meet Kim since the young North Korean leader took power in December 2011, and takes place against a backdrop of tension between Washington and Pyongyang. North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test just two weeks ago, making clear the provocative act was a warning to the United States to drop what it considers a "hostile" policy toward the North.

Kim, a diehard basketball fan, told the former Chicago Bulls star he hoped the visit would break the ice between the United States and North Korea, VICE founder Shane Smithsaid.

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