BEIJING // Former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman said he is “just trying to open a door” by going to North Korea on Tuesday in his first visit since Donald Trump became US president.
Mr Rodman was seen headed towards immigration at Beijing airport from where he is expected to fly to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
Asked if he had spoken to Mr Trump about his trip, Mr Rodman said: “Well, I’m pretty sure he’s pretty much happy with the fact that I’m over here trying to accomplish something that we both need.”
The former basketball star has received the red-carpet treatment on four past trips since 2013, but has been roundly criticised for visiting during a time of high tensions between the US and North Korea over its weapons programs.
His entourage included Joseph Terwilliger, a professor who has accompanied him on previous trips to North Korea. Mr Rodman said the issue of several Americans currently detained by North Korea is “not my purpose right now”.
In Tokyo, a visiting senior US official said Rodman is travelling as a private citizen.
“We are aware of his visit. We wish him well, but we have issued travel warnings to Americans and suggested they not travel to North Korea for their own safety,” US undersecretary of state Thomas Shannon said after discussing the North Korean missile threat and other issues with Japanese counterparts.
In 2014, Rodman arranged a basketball game with other former NBA players and North Koreans and regaled leader Kim Jong-un with a rendition of Happy Birthday. On the same trip, he suggested that an American missionary was at fault for his own imprisonment in North Korea, remarks for which he later apologised.
A foreign ministry official in Pyongyang confirmed that Mr Rodman was expected to arrive Tuesday but could not provide details. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the ministry had not issued a formal statement.
Any visit to North Korea by a high-profile American is a political minefield, and Mr Rodman has been criticised for failing to use his influence on leaders who are otherwise isolated diplomatically from the rest of the world.
Americans are regarded as enemies in North Korea because the two countries never signed a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War. Thousands of US troops are based in South Korea, and the Demilitarised Zone between the North and South is one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world.
A statement issued in New York by a publicist said the former NBA player is in the rare position of being friends with the leaders of both North Korea and the United States. Mr Rodman was a cast member on two seasons of Trump's Celebrity Apprentice.
Mr Rodman tweeted that his trip was being sponsored by Potcoin, one of a growing number of cybercurrencies used to buy and sell marijuana in state-regulated markets.
North Korea has been hailed by marijuana news outlets as a paradise for the drug and maybe even the next Amsterdam of pot tourism. But the claim that marijuana is legal in North Korea is not true: the penal code lists it as a controlled substance in the same category as cocaine and heroin.
* Associated Press
