It’s the quintessential odd couple: A 6-foot-7-inch American basketball player covered with tattoos and a 5-foot-4-inch obese dictator in North Korea.
But the two became fast friends when Dennis Rodman, a star of the NBA in the 1990s, visited the communist country in 2013. Kim is (or was, if he’s no longer alive) a huge basketball fan (he once reportedly requested that the U.S. send “famous basketball players” as part of a deal to normalize relations between the two countries).
Rodman spilled details of his visits to the secretive nation when he appeared last week on ex-boxer Mike Tyson’s “HotBoxin’” podcast.
“I’m thinking I’m going to do an autograph show or play basketball. I ain’t know anything about North Korea, stupid as f***, right?,” he said, according to the New York Post.
Rodman said that when Kim approached him after an exhibition basketball game with the Harlem Globetrotters, the baller had no idea who the leader was.
“He asked ‘You like my country?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, it’s fine, it’s cool, it’s OK.’”
Kim told him: “We asked Michael Jordan to come but he wouldn’t come, so we asked you,” Rodman said.
Then the night got crazy.
Kim invited Rodman to his house (or palace or evil lair or whatever it’s called) for some fun.
“Let’s have dinner tonight. A little karaoke and have some vodka, some hotties and stuff like that,” Rodman said Kim told him. “Next thing I know, we are having dinner and we are drunk as s***, he starts singing karaoke and I have no clue what the f*** he’s talking about.”
And the night got wilder, Rodman said. After the karaoke, “Everyone starts clapping and then he has this 18-piece girl band come out and these girls are hot, but they just played one song. Just one f***ing song. It was the theme from ‘Dallas,'” the TV shows from the 1970s.
But Rodman said it wasn’t all fun and games. “I’ve seen the military, I’ve seen the missiles, I’ve seen everything.” And Rodman said he didn’t get into foreign relations. “The politics, I don’t get involved with that,” he said. “I came here to bring sports.”
No one has seen Kim for weeks. A Japanese magazine reported last month that Kim is in a vegetative state after falling gravely ill following heart surgery.
According to Shukan Gendai, Kim visited a rural area earlier this month and collapsed. He reportedly underwent a stent procedure, which inserted a tube into his heart to keep blood flowing free.
CNN last week cited sources that said they believed that Kim was in serious condition following a medical procedure:
The US is monitoring intelligence that suggests North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is in grave danger after undergoing a previous surgery, according to a US official with direct knowledge.
A second source familiar with the intelligence told CNN that the US has been closely monitoring reports on Kim’s health.
Kim recently missed the celebration of his grandfather’s birthday on April 15, which raised speculation about his well-being. He had been seen four days before that at a government meeting.
Another US official told CNN Monday that the concerns about Kim’s health are credible but the severity is hard to assess.
But Rodman said he doesn’t believe those reports.
“It probably wasn’t much,” he told the New York Post. “I’ve been to dinner with dignitaries there that were reported to be dead here. I don’t believe North Korean news until I hear it from their side. I think the fact that they keep to themselves, in many ways, gives the media the ability to run with rumors at times.”
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