Rodman throws focus off brutal North Korea regime

SHARE Rodman throws focus off brutal North Korea regime

WASHINGTON — Former Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman’s latest “basketball diplomacy” with North Korea is keeping the focus off the brutal regime led by Kim Jong Un, a top State Department spokesman said Monday.

AP reports that Rodman is already in North Korea and that he plans a Jan 8 exhibition game as a “birthday present” to it totalitarian leader, Kim Jong Un, who Rodman has called his friend.

“As a diplomat , he is a good basketball player, but ultimately our focus should be on the suffering of the people of North Korea at the hands of the regime,” State Department Spokesman Jen Psaki told me in an e-mail.

The U.S. does not maintain diplomatic relations with North Korea; the governing regime has been accused of human rights abuses and is under international pressure because of its nuclear program.

Rodman is taking a group of former pro basketball players to the rogue nation for the exhibition game. He is playing diplomat in a society that is not free and whose leader is suspected of killing his uncle. Stories about Kim Jong Un feeding his uncle alive to starving dogs have not been confirmed.

As the State Department noted in a travel warning for U.S. citizens, “It is a criminal act in North Korea to show disrespect to the country’s former leaders, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, or to the current leader, Kim Jong Un.”

Rodman travels as a private citizen to North Korea. He has not debriefed any U.S. diplomats after his North Korean trips.

The Latest
The man was shot in the left eye area in the 5700 block of South Christiana Avenue on the city’s Southwest Side.
Most women who seek abortions are women of color, especially Black women. Restricting access to mifepristone, as a case now before the Supreme Court seeks to do, would worsen racial health disparities.
The Bears have spent months studying the draft. They’ll spend the next one plotting what could happen.
Woman is getting anxious about how often she has to host her husband’s hunting buddy and his wife, who don’t contribute at all to mealtimes.
He launched a campaign against a proposed neo-Nazis march at a time the suburb was home to many Holocaust survivors. His rabbi at Skokie Central Congregation urged Jews to ignore the Nazis. “I jumped up and said, ‘No, Rabbi. We will not stay home and close the windows.’ ”