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Dennis Rodman has touched down in North Korea for the fifth time, this time thanks to a sponsor called PotCoin–an “ultra-secure digital cryptocurrency, network and banking solution for the $100 billion global legal marijuana industry.”
Rodman, an unlikely and unofficial ambassador of authoritarian state, wrote Tuesday afternoon on Twitter that he had arrived in the country, saying “I’m back” and thanking “my sponsor PotCoin.com.” According to the New York Times, websites and marijuana magazines have dubbed North Korea as a stoner’s paradise where weed is legal and can be freely purchased in stores, a notion that has been debunked by The Associated Press.
Rodman stopped in Beijing en route to Pyongyang on Tuesday afternoon and told reporters he was “hoping to do something pretty positive,” Yahoo! News reports.
Suzanne DiMaggio, a director at the New America think tank who had been involved in unofficial talks with North Korea, said on Twitter that there was a “high probability” of communication or even coordination between the Trump administration and Rodman. It has been reported that he is not acting in any official capacity.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is reportedly an avid basketball fan who took a liking to Rodman in his playing days. Un’s admiration for Rodman was likely the genesis of the eccentric NBA star’s first visit to the repressive state back in 2103, when the dictator sat with Rodman while watching an exhibition game that featured three Harlem Globetrotters.
Despite the State Department strongly warning Americans not to visit because of the risk of arrest and long-term detention, Rodman has gotten so close with the dictator that he even held Un’s newborn baby back in 2013. Rodman’s relationship with the secretive state falls in direct contrast with that of Otto F. Warmbier, an American college student who was sentenced to a 15-year prison term for trying to steal a propaganda poster in January 2016. Otto was just released today, coincidently enough.
One day, when this whole saga becomes a little less blurred, there is going to be one hell of a documentary that explains what the hell is going on here. Now lets flash back to 2014 when Rodman incoherently mumbled to a CNN reporter about Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American Christian Missionary convicted by North Korea on charges of planning to overthrow the North Korean government.
[h/t New York Times]