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PYONGYANG. — Retired NBA star Dennis Keith Rodman arrived here yesterday for his second visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the invitation of the country’s Sports Ministry.“I am happy to come back here again, to meet my friend,” Rodman told the media upon his arrival.
Here, the “friend” is believed to be the country’s top leader, Kim Jong Un, although a ministry official said it was not clear whether or when they would meet.
A vice sports minister was at the airport to greet Rodman, who came as a member of the Prince Marketing Group and is accompanied by Michael Peter Spavor, a Canadian NGO official, Joseph Douglas Tervillinger, a Columbia University professor, and Prince manager Christopher Volo.
“Rodman’s visit has nothing to do with the sentenced Korean American Kenneth Bae,” a Sports Ministry source said on condition of anonymity, adding that they have been preparing for Rodman’s visit since late July.
According to the source, the delegation is scheduled to give a basketball clinic, watch a Taekwondo performance and a women’s football match, and travel to Mt Kumgang during their four-day stay.
Local Korean reporters and APTV Korean employees were allowed to go into the airport. However, foreign correspondents in Pyongyang were denied access.
Rodman visited the DPRK in late February, when tensions on the Korean Peninsula had soared after Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test on February 12.
During that visit, he attended an exhibition basketball match with Kim and called Kim “an awesome guy” and his “friend.”
When asked about how his trip would contribute to the two countries’ relations, Rodman told Xinhua in February: “About the relationship, no one man can do anything. Do not hate people, life is not about that. I love him, he is an awesome guy.”
“I will bring more of my friends here later this year and to do more things in the sports field,” he said before leaving the DPRK.
Though US officials frowned on the trip for giving Kim a propaganda boost, Rodman said “basketball diplomacy” could warm relations.
Rodman’s latest visit came days after an American envoy’s visit was canceled on Friday. Robert King, in charge of human rights issues related to the DPRK, had planned to visit Pyongyang in a bid to seek the freedom of Bae, a 45-year-old Korean American sentenced in late April to 15 years of hard labor for “hostile acts” against the country. — Xinhua.
Online Reporter