Basketball player Dennis Rodman is an unusual character, to say the least. He is 6 feet, 7 inches (201 cm) tall, his body is covered in tattoos, he has rings through his ears, nose, lip and other body parts, and his hair is a color that does not occur in nature.
Rodman has been married three times and has had considerable problems as an alcoholic. In 2008, he was made to do community service as punishment for domestic violence.
During the 1990s, his “bad boy” image was well-known. Bad Idea Jeans, which started out as a comedy sketch, then became a real product, used him in one of its commercials. How about that steak sandwich, Rodman?
(Go here if you can’t see the video.)
Since then he’s also appeared in various reality TV series. Rodman’s main claim to fame, however, is as a talented basketball player. He has been part of five NBA teams; the NBA itself calls him “the best rebounding forward in NBA history”.
This reputation has made Rodman fans around the world, including another “bad boy” — North Korea’s king, Kim Jong-un. In February 2013, around the time when Kim Jong-un was threatening a nuclear war against South Korea and its main ally, the United States, Rodman was in North Korea playing an exhibition game for him.
Rodman got to talk to Kim for two days and make him “a friend for life”. “I don’t condone what he does, but as a person to person, he’s my friend,” Rodman told ABC News. He returned with a message: their two countries should talk. In other words, Barack Obama, who is also a basketball fan, should “pick up the phone and call” Kim.
The United States has never officially recognized North Korea, and it’s not about to. The two countries are still caught up in a kind of chicken-and-egg blame game having to do with the nuclear negotiations of the 1990s. The State Department was offended by Rodman’s actions.
Nonetheless, the basketball player is believed to be the first American to have ever met Kim Jong-un face-to-face. The message he brought back is, therefore, the only one that Kim has ever stated directly to an American. In a way, Rodman has achieved a lot more than the spies and diplomats have.
Almost everything that the US knows about North Korea comes from defectors and from clandestine documentaries, such as this fascinating one made by Vice Media in 2007.
Rodman should have been invited straight to the White House to talk about what he saw. Fortunately, Vice Media was able to tag along on his February tour and make another documentary.
In September, Rodman again visited Kim Jong-un and met his baby daughter. In December, Rodman trained the North Korean national basketball team to perform in an exhibition with himself and the Harlem Globetrotters. That took place last week, on 8 January, which was Kim Jong-un’s birthday. Rodman sang “Happy Birthday” to Kim in a way that was reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe’s rendition for John F. Kennedy.
As the Vice documentary states, North Korea’s government has everyone there believing that the rest of the world loves North Korea. Rodman has been widely criticized for contributing to this illusion, for being uncritical of Kim’s medieval human-rights practices, and for failing to negotiate the release of an American prisoner, Kenneth Bae, who North Korea says was plotting to overthrow the North Korean government.
Meeting with Western hostility while traveling back through Beijing on Monday, Rodman broke down. “I’m not God. I’m not [an] ambassador. I’m no one,” he told reporters. “I just want to show the world the fact that we can actually get along in sport. That is it!”
Rodman still hopes his “basketball diplomacy” will fix North Korean-American relations the same way that “ping-pong diplomacy” — a table-tennis tournament — opened the path to Richard Nixon’s official visit to China in 1972.
Is Rodman the right person to do this? Probably not. But right now he’s the only one offering North Korea a steak sandwich.
