"Dennis Rodman says North Korea trip is social" by Gerry Mullany | New York Times, September 04, 2013
HONG KONG — Dennis Rodman, the former basketball star, returned Tuesday to North Korea, where he said he planned to see “my friend” Kim Jong Un, the dictator whose country until recently was threatening to annihilate the United States with nuclear weapons.
Rodman said in Beijing that he was planning a five-day visit to the North but played down speculation that he would try to secure the release of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American Christian missionary who has been jailed there since late last year after being detained on North Korean soil.
See: Slow Saturday Special: Waving Bae-Bae to This Korean Item
“I’m not going to North Korea to discuss freeing Kenneth Bae,” Rodman, a Basketball Hall of Fame member, told Reuters in a telephone interview. “I’m just going there on another basketball diplomacy tour.” Kim is known to be a fervent basketball fan, and the two watched a game together during Rodman’s previous visit.
His visit comes amid a thaw in relations between North and South Korea....
Rodman’s last trip to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, was sponsored by Vice Media, and he drew wide criticism for cozying up to a government with a long record of human rights abuses. The current trip is being sponsored by Paddy Power, an Irish gambling operation, he said. After Rodman’s first North Korea trip, Paddy Power sent Rodman to Vatican City to urge people to place bets on the identity of the new pope.
But Rodman said this trip to see Kim was all about friendship — and sports.
“I’ve come out here to see my friend,” he said. “I want to talk about basketball.”
During his visit to North Korea in March, Rodman told reporters in Pyongyang that North Koreans “love” Kim Jong Un, adding, “I love him — the guy’s awesome.”
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Related: Kim Jong Un: No joke
Do I ever look like I'm laughing here, Globe?
This will freak you out even more:
"North Korea to display captured US ship; USS Pueblo was seized in 1968" by Eric Talmadge | Associated Press, July 26, 2013
PYONGYANG, North Korea — If there was ever any doubt about what happened to the only US Navy ship being held by a foreign government, North Korea has cleared it up. It is in Pyongyang. And it looks like it’s here to stay.
With a fresh coat of paint and a new home along the Pothong River, the USS Pueblo, a spy ship seized off North Korea’s east coast in the late 1960s, is expected to be unveiled this week as the centerpiece of a renovated war museum to commemorate what North Korea calls ‘‘Victory Day,’’ the 60th anniversary this Saturday of the signing of the armistice that ended hostilities in the Korean War.
The ship is North Korea’s greatest Cold War prize. Its government hopes the Pueblo will serve as a potent symbol of how the country has stood up to the great power of the United States, once in an all-out ground war and now with its push to develop nuclear weapons and sophisticated missiles to threaten the US mainland.
Many of the crew who served on the vessel, then spent 11 months in captivity in North Korea, want to bring the Pueblo home. Throughout its history, they argue, the Navy’s motto has been ‘‘don’t give up the ship.’’ The Pueblo, in fact, is still listed as a commissioned US Navy vessel.
But with relations generally fluctuating in a narrow band between bad to dangerously bad, the United States has made little effort to get it back. At times, outsiders were not even sure where North Korea was keeping the ship.
Requests for interviews with the captain of one of the North Korean ships involved in the attack were denied, and officials here have been tight lipped about their plans before the formal unveiling.
The Pueblo incident is a painful reminder of miscalculation and confusion, as well as the unresolved hostilities that continue to keep the two countries in what seems to be a permanent state of distrust and preparation for another clash, despite the truce that ended the 1950-1953 war.
Already more than 40 years old and only lightly armed so it would not look conspicuous or threatening as it carried out its intelligence missions, the USS Pueblo was attacked and easily captured on Jan. 23, 1968.
Surrounded by a half dozen enemy ships with MiG fighter jets providing air cover, the crew was unable to put up much of a fight. It scrambled to destroy intelligence materials, but soon discovered it wasn’t well prepared for even that.
A shredder aboard the Pueblo quickly became jammed with the piles of papers anxious crew members shoved into it. They tried burning the documents in waste baskets, but smoke quickly filled the cabins.
One US sailor was killed when the ship was strafed by machine gun fire and boarded. The remaining 82, including three injured, were imprisoned.
For the survivors, that is when the real ordeal began....
Although the ship was conducting intelligence operations, crew members say that most of them had little useful information for the North Koreans. That, according to the crew, didn’t stop them from being beaten severely during interrogations....
Given what the U.S. has done the last 10 years or so, who are we to criticize?
North Korea said the ship had entered its territorial waters; the United States maintained it was in international waters 15 miles off land.
Given the Gulf of Tonkin lie who do you believe?
The incident quickly escalated. The United States, already embroiled in the Vietnam War, sent several aircraft carriers to the Sea of Japan and demanded the captives be released.
North Korea responded by putting members of the crew before cameras to confess publicly. The crew members planted defiant codes into forced letters of confession and extended their middle fingers in images sent around the world. That led to more beatings....
I'm already beat and I've hardly posted anything.
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