PYONGYANG – Former NBA star Dennis Rodman brought his basketball skills and flamboyant style — tattoos, nose studs and all — to the country with possibly the world’s strictest dress code: North Korea.
Arriving in Pyongyang, the American athlete and showman known as “The Worm” became an unlikely ambassador for sports diplomacy at a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. Or maybe not so unlikely: Young leader Kim Jong Un is said to have been a fan of the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, when Rodman won three championships with the team.
Rodman is joining three members of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team and a VICE magazine correspondent for a news show on North Korea that will air on HBO later this year.
“It’s my first time, I think it’s most of these guys’ first time here, so hopefully everything’s going to be OK, and hoping the kids have a good time for the game,” Rodman told reporters after arriving in North Korea on Tuesday.
Rodman and VICE’s producers said they hope to engage in a little “basketball diplomacy” by running a basketball camp for children and playing with North Korea’s top basketball players.
“Is sending the Harlem Globetrotters and Dennis Rodman to (North Korea) strange? In a word, ‘yes,’ ” said Shane Smith, the VICE founder who will host the upcoming HBO series. “But finding common ground on the basketball court is a beautiful thing.”
The notoriously unpredictable and irrepressible Rodman might seem an odd fit for regimented North Korea, where men’s fashion rarely ventures beyond military khaki and where growing facial hair is forbidden. Shown a photo of a snarling Rodman, piercings dangling from his lower lip and two massive tattoos emblazoned on his chest, one Pyongyang resident recoiled and said: “He looks like a monster!”
But Rodman is also a Hall of Fame basketball player and one of the best defenders and rebounders to ever play the game. During a storied, often controversial career, he won five NBA championships — a feat appreciated even in North Korea.
Now 51, Rodman was low-key and soft-spoken in cobalt blue sweatpants and a Polo Ralph Lauren cap. There was a bit of flash: white-rimmed sunglasses and studs in his nose and lower lip. But he said he was there to teach basketball and talk to people, not to stir up trouble. Showier were three Harlem Globetrotters dressed in fire-engine red.
The Americans also will visit North Korea’s national monuments, the SEK animation studio and a new skate park in Pyongyang.
Rodman’s trip is the second high-profile American visit this year to North Korea, a country that remains in a state of war with the U.S. It also comes two weeks after North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test in defiance of U.N. bans against atomic and missile activity. Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, made a surprise four-day trip in January to Pyongyang, just weeks after North Korea launched a satellite into space on the back of a long-range rocket.
Promoting technology and sports are two major policy priorities of Kim, who took power in December 2011 following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il. Along with soccer, basketball is enormously popular in North Korea, where it’s not uncommon to see basketball hoops set up in hotel parking lots or in schoolyards. It’s a game that doesn’t require much equipment or upkeep.
The U.S. remains Enemy No. 1 in North Korea, and North Koreans have limited exposure to American pop culture. But they know Michael Jordan, a former teammate of Rodman’s when they both played for the Bulls in the 1990s.
An informal poll of North Koreans revealed that The Worm isn’t quite as much of a household name in Pyongyang. But Kim was a basketball-crazy adolescent when Rodman played for the Bulls. In a memoir, Kim Jong Il’s personal sushi chef recalled that basketball was the young Kim’s biggest passion, and that the Bulls were his favorite team
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