Former NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman presents gifts comprising of autographed basketball jerseys, bath soaps and two books, titled “Where’s Waldo?” and “Trump The Art of the Deal” to North Korea’s Sports Minister Kim Il Guk, right
Dennis Rodman has delivered a message from President Donald Trump to North Korea — sort of.
Yesterday, the former NBA player gave the country’s sports minister a copy of Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal,” a present intended for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
It wasn’t signed by Trump, who was Rodman’s boss for two seasons of the “Celebrity Apprentice” reality TV show. Rodman has said his visit has nothing to do with the White House.
While his previous visits in 2013 and 2014 often drew controversy, Rodman has said this week he’s just here to meet old friends and have a good time.
He and his small entourage have been spending time hanging out with young North Korean basketball players and visiting local sights.
He watched a North Korean men’s basketball team and met Sports Minister Kim Il Guk. Along with the Trump book, other gifts he presented for Kim Jong Un include a copy of “Where’s Waldo? The Totally Essential Travel Collection,” a mermaid puzzle, two sets of soap and two autographed jerseys.
Rodman also met North Korean Olympic athletes, including judo gold medalist An Kum Ae.
“All of you guys should be proud of yourselves, because, you know, a lot of people don’t give you guys credit, because this is such a small country, and not many people from North Korea can compete around the world,” Rodman said.
He continued: “But for you guys to come back here in your country, with a medal, that says a lot about North Korea, because people don’t really take North Korea so seriously about sports or anything like that.”
Rodman, one of the only Westerners to have personally met Kim Jong Un, has been criticized for a prior trip where he sang “Happy Birthday” to Kim and suggested an American missionary was at fault for his own imprisonment in North Korea, remarks for which he later apologized.
But the sports minister made clear Rodman is viewed fondly in Pyongyang.
“In the past, our respected supreme leader met you several times and he used his precious time to watch the basketball match with the players you brought here. In the past he met you, so our people all know you well,” Kim Il Guk told Rodman. “And also we feel that you are an old friend.”
Rodman’s arrival esarlier this week came just hours after the North decided to release Otto Warmbier, an American university student who had been imprisoned for 15 years with hard labor for trying to steal a propaganda banner.
Officials in Washington and Pyongyang said Rodman played no role in the release. Behind-the-scenes discussions regarding Warmbier had been underway well before his visit.
Although U.S. citizens are not banned from visiting North Korea, the U.S. State Department strongly advises against it.
With Warmbier’s release, three other Americans remain imprisoned in North Korea. Eric Talmadge, Pyongyang, AP
Pyongyang says it freed us student over humanitarian reasons
North Korea said it released an American university student over “humanitarian” reasons in its first official comment since he was returned to his home state of Ohio in a coma. The state-run Korean Central News Agency said Otto Warmbier had been serving hard labor but didn’t comment on his medical condition or how the country negotiated his release with the United States. “Warmbier, who had been in hard labor, was sent back home on June 13, 2017, on humanitarian grounds according to the adjudication made on the same day by the Central Court of the DPRK,” the agency said in the one-sentence report, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The 22-year-old Warmbier, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison in a one-hour trial in the Supreme Court in March 2016. He was medically evacuated from North Korea and arrived in Cincinnati Wednesday. His father, Fred Warmbier, told Fox News that his son was “terrorized and brutalized” and has been in a coma for more than a year.
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