Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong-un's relationship explained

 Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong-un's relationship explained
                        
     
                    YouTube       

                   By A. C. Grimes   
   
    One's the unhinged dictator of a dystopian nation where he reportedly forces citizens to watch their loved ones get executed in public. The other's a five-time NBA champion and possibly the secret love child of a tattoo gun and a rainbow. Together they're really confusing. And they've been together quite a bit. As ABC details, the unexpected connection between Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un goes back to 2013, when Rodman accepted an invitation to North Korea. Rodman and Kim have been photographed hugging each other. Rodman has passionately defended the dictator to the U.S. media. During a 2014 visit to the Hermit Kingdom, Rodman breathlessly sang "Happy Birthday" to Kim before ... possibly bursting into tears? It's not clear.

If Rodman were to dress as Kim and then marry himself, it would make zero percent less sense than any of the rest of what has already transpired. Does Rodman want to relive his Bad Boy days by teaming up with the worst boy imaginable? Does Kim want to know how it feels to own a one-person NBA team? Can somebody please explain how these two became BFFs? Oh, wait, that's what this article is for.

    

   
   
       Kim originally wanted to meet Michael Jordan
   

                    Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images       

   
   
    On a 2019 episode of Cold as Balls, a show premised on freezing your non-basket balls in a tub of ice water, Kevin Hart asked Dennis Rodman to explain how he became friends with Kim Jong Un. According to the former NBAer, "He loves the Chicago Bulls. He contacted Michael first. And Michael Jordan just like, 'No, I'm not doing that.'" So North Korean authorities contacted Rodman and invited him instead. Much like the "Worm" in his heyday, Kim was rebounding.

Rodman assumed the North Koreans wanted him to do an autograph signing, but he got invited to join an exhibition with a few Harlem Globetrotters because the world is a meaningless circus. He recalled not even knowing who Kim was when he first laid eyes on the dictator. In fact, he seemed to lack any awareness of how oppressed the people are there. Rodman saw a group of teary-eyed fans cheering their hearts out and assumed it was for him. It was for Kim because he's a dictator. And perhaps that sums up their relationship: a naive athlete getting charmed by manufactured happiness in one of the saddest places on Earth.

    

        
                    What life is really like in North Korea
                        

                   By Adam James   
   
    By all accounts, North Korea is a weird place. Everyone knows that. But just how weird is it?
Well, sad to say, life in North Korea goes way, way beyond simply weird. It's repressive, sad, and often deeply disturbing. From forced labor camps to propaganda to no Internet, life is truly torture in the world's most restrictive nation.

   
       The propaganda is inescapable
   
   
    In North Korea, the well-oiled propaganda machine is always working overtime, resulting in an environment in which brainwashing is inescapable.

In many ways, today's extreme propaganda in North Korea is heavily influenced by the deceased Kim Jong-il, former Dear Leader and father of current Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-il was an avid moviegoer and massive cinephile, who, according to Charlotte Burns, believed film was the "most powerful tool for educating the masses"—writing, in an essay called "Theory of Cinematic Art," that "it is cinema's duty to turn people into true communists." In fact, the Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea loved film so much, he commissioned the construction of seven cinemas for his use only, proclaimed himself a genius of cinema, and kidnapped a famous director and forced him to create 20 propaganda films, before jailing him for attempting an escape.

Indeed, North Korea's Hollywood of propaganda has worked wonders in creating an environment in which one cannot escape the perpetual bombardment of brainwashing attempts. Everywhere you look, there are posters lining the streets and murals covering every space of available wall.

The propaganda's main function is twofold. First, it aims to inspire nationalism, but not at the expense of love and loyalty to the Supreme Leader. Secondly, it aims to inspire hatred toward North Korea's enemies—and we all know who their biggest perceived enemy is.

    

 
   
       North Koreans are taught to hate America

   
    Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un wants North Koreans to view America (and Japan) as the enemy. His brainwashing machine churns out anti-American propaganda at a moderately disturbing rate.

In March 2017, North Korea released a propaganda video depicting a military strike on an American aircraft carrier, according to reports, in response to the United States' military involvement with neighboring South Korea. According to the Associated Press, the video, claims "a knife will be stabbed into the throat of the carrier" and shows "the USS Carl Vinson nuclear-powered aircraft carrier being engulfed in flames," before triumphantly declaring that "the bomber will fall from the sky after getting hit by a hail of fire," as a B-1B Lancer bursts into flames. Of course, it's all fake, but that's not what the people of North Korea are led to believe.

The country once released a video depicting a nuclear attack on the White House, and the state educational system indoctrinates children against the US as early as kindergarten—with Associated Press photos depicting North Korean children pretending to attack caricatures of American soldiers, drawing pictures of American military defeat, and anti-American propaganda posters in the primary-school classroom. The country also features a "Struggle Against US Imperialism Month," illustrating that North Korea has certainly not forgotten The Korean War.

Anti-American sentiment is certainly not the only thing North Korean propaganda and education preaches—as they also aren't particularly fond of Japan. Still, at least a minimal level of hatred toward the US is expected in your average, everyday North Korean life.

   
       Everything is a lie

   
    In North Korea, nothing—and we mean nothing—can be taken at face value.

In the words of Tim Urban, who wrote in the Huffington Post after visiting North Korea: "The government lies to the outside world. The government lies to the people. The press lies to the people. The people lie to each other. The tour guides lie to tourists. It's intense." Urban's description is not surprising, especially when we consider the plethora of propaganda spewed out on a daily basis. And, honestly, how can anyone be expected to tell the truth when your former Supreme Leader was, by various reports, born under a double rainbow and new star, learned to walk at three weeks old, learned to talk at eight weeks old, wrote 1,500 books and six operas—all of which are proclaimed to be the greatest in the history of music—in roughly three years, shot 11 holes-in-one the first time he ever picked up a golf club, became a global fashion icon, was capable of changing the weather with only his mind, invented the hamburger, and never pooped? Having such a leader doesn't really set a strong precedent for honesty in a society.

Even if many information outlets tend to exaggerate, if not straight up lie, about the isolated country, there's still an overwhelming amount of viable information to support the idea that life in North Korea is ... well ... fake.

    

There's very little resistance, and any that happens is met with extreme punishment

   
    Perhaps the most alarming thing about life in North Korea—from the perspective of people living in countries where protesting is, more or less, a protected right—is that there's virtually no resistance to the totalitarian government's rule, and any that does exist is met with extreme punishment. Even capturing everyday life on film or watching foreign movies can land one in prison, or worse.

That being said, some efforts are made to resist one of the world's most repressive totalitarian regimes. According to PBS, despite the North Korean government's bold anti-American attitudes, the US dollar is still a widely accepted currency, so defectors in China send dollars over the border via balloon. There's also a South Korean television show—illegal, of course, in North Korea—that features the stories of young defectors. Some particularly brave individuals secretly film everyday life in the country with handheld cameras, documenting such things as department stores displaying products that are not for sale.
Still, resistance in North Korea is minimal, as acts deemed to be criminal are met with unjust and brutal punishments. According to Human Rights Watch, the government of North Korea has been known to have "punished those found with unauthorized information from outside the country—including news, films, and photos—and used public executions to generate fearful obedience." Furthermore, "The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (COI), set up by the Human Rights Council (HRC), issued a report in 2014 documenting extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortion, and other sexual violence in North Korea. It concluded that the 'gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.'"

Imagine living in a place where possessing a USB drive with a foreign movie could have you publicly executed. That's pretty scary stuff, to be sure, and serves to illustrate the level of fear present in everyday North Korean society.

    

   
       There are horrific forced-labor camps
   

    If public executions for seemingly trivial offenses aren't bad enough, North Korea is also home to more than a handful of forced labor camps. If you're a citizen, one wrong move could land you in one of these hells. The same goes if you're a tourist.

For example, if you travel to North Korea and fancy stealing a propaganda poster as a souvenir, you're looking at 15 years in a forced labor camp. American college student Otto Warmbier found this out the hard way, receiving such a sentence for snagging a poster while on vacation in Pyongyang—deemed by the North Korean state to be, according to The Guardian, "tacit connivance of the US government and its manipulation."

In The Guardian, Suzanne Scholte, chairman of the North Korea freedom coalition, states: "Conditions [in the forced labor camps] are horrific. People are worked for 14, 15 or 16 hours every day with just a handful of corn to live on and they are intentionally starved and worked to death ... Torture is common, there's no medical aid and the sanitation is horrible. They wear the torn uniforms of old prisoners and sleep crammed together in a room." CNN reports of a mother who was beaten and forced to drown her own newborn baby, while also noting the disturbing fact that "North Korean prison camps have survived twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and much longer than the Nazi concentration camps." North Korean camps are full-fledged concentration camps, say some.

Of course, North Korea denies the existence of these labor camps, but—in reality—these prisons are another means of terrorizing the population of the world's most restrictive country into passivity and submission.

    
       Children are indoctrinated

   
    Not only does being an adult in North Korea totally suck, but being growing up there's also a terrible experience.

North Korea has roughly 5.3 million children under the age of 14 living in the country's loving borders. Everything they are taught is within the country's rigid ideology—which can be compressed into the following statement from 14-year-old Kim Myong Hyok, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: "I want to be in the army and defend our country and our marshal, Kim Jong Un ... The American imperialists and the Japanese are threatening us, so young people should serve in the army."

Many children who aren't lucky enough to live in Pyongyang must spend their formative years performing forced labor on farms, or sent to labor camps. If school buses exist, they are often repurposed dump trucks, which serve as an alternative to walking to school over potentially dangerous terrain. It probably goes without saying that life in a North Korean orphanage is awful, and those with loving parents still must make regular trips—according to Business Insider—to worship the country's glorious leaders, who themselves insist that North Korean children are the happiest in the world.

North Korea knows that the children are the future and appear to be doing the best they can to indoctrinate them into their already incomparably repressive society.

   
       North Koreans have very little knowledge of the outside world
   

   
    One way in which North Korea effectively controls and subjugates its population is by restricting access to any and all information that doesn't come directly from the mouth of North Korea.
According to Human Rights Watch's latest World Report, "All domestic media and publications [in North Korea] are strictly state-controlled, and foreign media allowed inside the country are tightly controlled as well. Internet and international phone calls are heavily monitored." Furthermore, "unauthorized access to non-state radio, newspapers, or TV broadcasts is severely punished," and "North Koreans face punishment if they are found with mobile media, such as Chinese mobile phones, SD cards or USBs containing unauthorized videos of foreign news, films, or TV dramas." Seems reasonable enough, right? Who really wants Netflix?

North Korea's absurd restriction on information serves to prove The New York Times's judgment true, labeling the country as the world's most oppressed nation. Indeed, the country has an astonishingly bad rating of 96/100—with 100 being the worst—when it comes to freedom of ｅxpression, according to Freedom House's annual Report on Press Freedom. Naturally, there's no Internet, unless you count the state-controlled, heavily filtered intranet monitored by the Korea Computer Center. According to Canadian Journalists for Free ｅxpression (CJFE), "restrictions are also placed on academics and arts within the state—ideological education takes precedence over academic education, and all curricula, plays, movies, and operas center on improving the reputation of the Kim family." If you're a foreign journalist, you have to leave your cell phone at home, shouldn't speak to citizens, and are forbidden from doing anything even remotely journalistic—with someone accompanying or following you, just to make sure.

   
       There is no escape

    Of course, not everyone in North Korea accepts this existence, and some wish to defect. Defectors, however, are met with severe punishment—not necessarily for themselves, but for generations of their family.

According to The Guardian, Park Sang-hak, a defector and activist, "quit his job in 2003 after learning his fiancée had been beaten so badly following his escape that she was left unrecognizable, that his two uncles had been tortured to death and that his teenage cousins were reduced to street begging." Children of defectors are forced into labor camps, or worse, as are any other relations. In many cases, family members who resist forced labor are executed, and anyone who wishes to escape the country must seek out a reputable people smuggler—which is certainly no easy task.

That's really how you know when a country is well and truly twisted—when you can't even leave, for risk that your loved ones will be tortured or killed.

    
Messed up things that actually happened in North Korea
        

                   By Chris Heasman   
   
    There's a lot to find funny about North Korea. From the absurdly generous full name (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) to the bizarre, amateurish official website to the countless reports and stories in the press of inhuman feats of strength performed by its dictators, outlandish threats toward its enemies, and strange transgressions committed by its own senior officials, it's easy to see the DPRK as a big geopolitical joke. In truth, however, it's anything but. Underneath the outlandish remarks and cartoonish villainy lies a totalitarian regime that employs murder, torture, and kidnapping on a massive scale to oppress its impoverished, starving population. The following events make up only a small fraction of the known crimes against humanity that are alleged to be committed every single day by Kim Jong-un's regime.

       Death by anti-aircraft

    Executions in the DPRK are likely no rarity, but because they so often take place without the knowledge of international observers — like if they happen inside the country's concentration and prison camps — it's difficult to know just how many are killed by the regime each year. Occasionally, however, an execution will take place that's high-profile enough to make world headlines.

This was the case in 2016, when, according to the South Korean media, a government purge of officials who were deemed to be a threat to the regime led to the arrest and subsequent execution of two ministers: Hwang Min, agriculture minister, and Ri Yong-jin, who worked at the education ministry. Purges are common in the country, and executions usually follow, but it was the nature of these executions that made them so noteworthy — Hwang and Ri (the latter of whom was said to have been purged for falling asleep in a meeting with Kim Jong-un) were executed by anti-aircraft gun, likely as a show of force to instill fear in other government officials.

According to South Korean lawmakers who had been briefed by the intelligence services, five more people were killed with this method in early 2017, setting a terrifying precedent for murder in the DPRK.

   
       Very, very public executions

    Inhumane executions aren't just reserved for the higher-ups in North Korea, though, and ordinary citizens or peasants can just as easily find themselves meeting vicious, grisly ends. This was the case in 2007, when, according to Good Friends — an aid organization that focuses on the DPRK — a factory manager from Suncheon was killed for covering up the fact that his father was a part of the pre-Kim government. He was also convicted of investing private money and making international phone calls.

Unlike most, who would have been murdered in a prison camp, the factory manager was instead made an example of, executed in a stadium in his home town. The report stated that up to 170,000 people were present for the execution of the 74-year-old. Worse still, six people were said to have been killed leaving the stadium because of the sheer size of the crowd, while a number of other officials "connected" to the incident were also fired. In the DPRK, it's probably safe to assume that being let go doesn't consist of a stern talking-to and a severance package.

    
   
       The fate of American POWs

    During the Korean War, a young soldier named Wayne Minard — who joined the army at 17 and had served for only two years in the military — went missing in action after Chinese troops attacked U.N. forces near the Ch'ongch'on River. According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Minard died in February 1951, only months later, of starvation in an enemy prison camp. The nature of Minard's death is no anomaly in the Korean War, and the lists of missing troops, many of whom were likely murdered in the camps are very long indeed.

Most shocking of all, however, is that Minard's remains were only returned to the United States in late 2016, well over half a century later. Even in 2017, almost 8,000 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War. The maltreatment of POWs by the regime in its early days means that many soldiers, who were captured and later killed, have never been returned home for a proper burial — and likely never will be.

    
   
       The plunder order
 
   
    Starvation is a specter that looms over many of the ordinary citizens of North Korea, and food aid has long been part of negotiations with the country. In the summer of 2017, however, matters worsened somewhat with the implementation of an order by the regime for soldiers to plunder farms for corn in order to feed themselves.

A North Korean source told the media in Seoul that these soldiers, who are malnourished largely due to exhaustion from training, have been ordered to steal to eat in order to keep their strength up for what the military believes could be an impending war against South Korea, Japan, or the United States. As a result, farmers are reportedly being forced to defend their farms against the military, and soldiers themselves are said to be selling the stolen corn at markets across the Ryanggang province.

   
       Songbun

    The songbun system — "songbun" means "ingredient" or "background" — was an identification caste set up by the North Korean government in the late 1960s. As Kim Il-sung tightened his grip on the country, he implemented the system as a way of identifying which citizens were potential threats to the new regime. Based on their own actions and the actions of their parents, over three million citizens were ranked as core, wavering, or hostile.

If you were close to Kim or if you had been a resistance fighter against the Japanese, you became part of the core class. If you had been a landowner, businessman, or intellectual under Japanese rule, you were part of the hostile class. Your class dictated where you were allowed to live, what job you held, and whether you were likely to be persecuted by the state.

The songbun system fell apart after a famine in the 1990s, when North Koreans realized they could climb in social status by bribing government officials. Nowadays, the country is so corrupt that many are able to buy their way out of punishment for crimes or access areas of society they couldn't reach before. The system just exists in a different form — those who are unable to bribe their way into an easy life are still oppressed by the first government's grand design.

   
       The totalitarian Netflix
   
   
    Among all the death, torture, and starvation, it's still pretty remarkable — unsettling, even — to watch how North Korea's government attempts to instill a sense of loyalty and patriotism in its subjects. Recently, for example, the country's state media announced plans to set up its own streaming service for television. In a bizarre move that sounds like something taken out of a tacky reboot of 1984, the service, known as "Manbang" in Korean (yes, har har), would allow citizens to watch up to five different channels, each showing documentaries, news reports, and articles ... approved and sponsored by the government.

Despite the state media claims, however, many are skeptical of Manbang's existence, largely because there's next to no internet availability in the country. As it stands, this form of Orwellian populace control is unlikely to come to fruition.

    
       The ax murder incident

   The ax murder incident is one of the more notorious events in the history of relations between North Korea and the United States. on August 18, 1976, a group of U.S. Army soldiers set off into the Demilitarized Zone to cut down a poplar tree blocking the view of the "Bridge of No Return" across the DMZ. Two officers in the group were axed to death during the trip by North Korean guards from a treaty village between the two nations.

A crisis ensued. Three days later, two platoons of the Joint Security Force were sent to cut down the tree in a show of force against the DPRK. The North responded by sending up to 200 fully-armed troops. Machine gun positions were set up, troops were placed on standby, and an air force base in Japan went on full alert. Eventually, the tree was felled without further confrontation. Today, the stump — all that's left of the tree — stands as a stark reminder of how easily tensions between the forces in the DMZ can escalate into something altogether more terrifying.

    
       Pressuring the elderly into suicide
   
    In recent years, thanks to more expensive medicine, increasing starvation, and a growing apathy toward elders, many North Korean families are pressuring their older members into suicide.

According to Radio Free Asia, which cited a source in the North Hamgyong province, the elderly — who find it difficult to live under a strained welfare system — are leaving their homes during the day to avoid conflict with their children. Because of the financial burden of caring for an elderly person, many adults are asking their parents (some of whom are Korean War veterans) to kill themselves for the sake of the family. Unsurprisingly, this is not a problem for the higher ranks of North Korean citizens and leaders.

   
       The death of Otto Warmbier

   Of the few American citizens who have been detained by the North Korean regime while visiting over the years, the case of Otto Warmbier might be the most well-known — and horrifying. Aged just 22, he was held in North Korea in January 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel room, where he'd been staying while touring the country. Warmbier, who was a student at the University of Virginia, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a trial that allegedly took less than an hour.

In 2017, Warmbier was returned from North Korea to the United States in a state of unresponsive wakefulness, heavily brain damaged. He was unable to speak, to see, or to react to verbal commands. Warmbier died soon after arriving home. Despite protests from the regime, it's assumed that he sustained his injuries through beatings and torture by the North Koreans. Three Americans are still jailed in North Korea.

    
   
       Pulgasari
   
   
    It isn't unheard of for the DPRK to employ kidnapping beyond its borders to further its own aims. one of the more bizarre cases of kidnapping involved Shin Sang Ok, a popular South Korean film director. Shin's wife, a film star herself, was lured to China and abducted by the North Koreans; Shin was taken while attempting to track her down. At the behest of Kim Jong-il, Shin was forced to produce and direct seven films starring his wife. Most famous of these is Pulgasari, a Godzilla flick in which the titular monster fights and defeats a villainous emperor.

The film was a hit in North Korea and impressed Kim — enough that he started to warm up to them. When they were allowed to visit Vienna for "business," they fled to a U.S. embassy. Pulgasari was banned from North Korean theaters shortly after.

    
   
       The Japanese abductions
   
   
Most kidnappings by the North Korean state, however, are a little less whimsical than the case of Shin Sang Ok. Over the course of the 1970s and '80s, the DPRK abducted at least a dozen Japanese citizens and brought them to North Korea. Kim Jong-il admitted in 2002 that the kidnappings (which included a beautician, a schoolgirl, and a young couple who were plucked off a beach) did indeed take place, insisting that they were committed solely by "reckless" special forces. He also revealed that eight of the missing had died, with four still living in Pyongyang.

According to the regime, the victims were taken so they could teach Japanese to North Korean spies, and in order to provide false identities for spies who would enter North Korea. Many suspect the North Korean government of having murdered at least some of the missing after rumors sprang up about the abductions in the 1990s.

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