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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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 Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 6:27 am Post subject: Dennis Rodman is back in North Korea |
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Dennis Rodman is back in North Korea.
"The marshal is actually trying to change this country in a great way," Rodman said of Kim, using the leader's official title. "I think that people thought that this was a joke, and Dennis Rodman is just doing this because fame and fortune." Instead, he said, he sees the game as a "birthday present" for Kim and his country.
"Just to even have us here, it's an awesome feeling. I want these guys here to show the world, and speak about North Korea in a great light," he said. "I hope people will have a different view about North Korea."
"When a reporter from Sky News suggested to Rodman that he had a responsibility to raise the issue of human rights as the only American with such access to the North Korea leader, Rodman responded “That’s not my job. The only thing I am doing right now, I am only doing one thing: this game is for his birthday. It’s for his birthday. “And I hope that if this opens doors and we can actually talk about certain things, then we can do certain things, but I am not going to sit there and go in and say ‘Hey guy, you’re doing the wrong thing.’” “That’s not the right thing to do. He’s my friend first. He’s my friend. I don’t give a (expletive). I tell the world: he’s my (expletive) friend, I love him.”
I have no words that could possibly add any analysis to how bizarre this is.
http://freekorea.us/2014/01/07/lifestyles-of-the-deeply-stupid-pyongyang-edition-or-dennis-rodman-the-accidental-activist/ |
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Chaparrastique
Joined: 01 Jan 2014
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| Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 7:41 am Post subject: |
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Rodman is just revelling in the attention, but all the same he might have a positive influence on the young leader.
I suspect that Kim junior actually wants to make reforms.
Yes he killed his uncle but he has to stamp his authority on the system before he can change it. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 7:59 am Post subject: |
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| What evidence do you see for reforms? Reforming the ski industry? |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 9:02 am Post subject: |
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| "You are our only hope, Dennis Rod-Kenobi." |
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jvalmer
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
| What evidence do you see for reforms? Reforming the ski industry? |
You can't just reform a system overnight, especially one like the one in NK. You've got to get the old guard on your side, especially the military. Without them, you'll just end up a figurehead, or 'accidentally' dead
I'm with Chap on this, I think he's routing out opponents for his safety, and possible in 5-ish years actual reforms. He can literally be the next Korean hero if he spearheaded a peaceful unification. There are some interesting articles about Kim Il-Sung, rumored that he started going soft on the south has he got on in age. But throughout his rule he did have high-level talks with the south. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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| There is no evidence that he supports reform. He has gotten rid of much of the old guard and put in his own people, and has increased crackdowns on people who try to flee to China. Why do people believe that he would be interested in reform given how much he has to lose from it. |
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Smithington
Joined: 14 Dec 2011
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| Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 8:47 pm Post subject: |
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I just watched his interview with CNN. Does he have some sort of brain injury? Can basketball players suffer from the "boxing" phenomenon of being knocked about once too often. I don't imagine they can, but Rodman sounds mildly retarded in this interview. He can't even speak coherently. Not being a basketball fan (or a sports fan) I don't recall ever hearing him speak in the past. Has he always sounded so unintelligent?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRpdZ9K4LIg |
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Chaparrastique
Joined: 01 Jan 2014
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| Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Smithington wrote: |
I just watched his interview with CNN. Does he have some sort of brain injury? Can basketball players suffer from the "boxing" phenomenon of being knocked about once too often. I don't imagine they can, but Rodman sounds mildly retarded in this interview. He can't even speak coherently. Not being a basketball fan (or a sports fan) I don't recall ever hearing him speak in the past. Has he always sounded so unintelligent?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRpdZ9K4LIg |
Oversized men, particularly blacks, often sound like daleks.
Because their vocal chords grow too big. |
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The Cosmic Hum
Joined: 09 May 2003
Location: Sonic Space
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| Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 10:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Chaparrastique wrote: |
| Smithington wrote: |
I just watched his interview with CNN. Does he have some sort of brain injury? Can basketball players suffer from the "boxing" phenomenon of being knocked about once too often. I don't imagine they can, but Rodman sounds mildly retarded in this interview. He can't even speak coherently. Not being a basketball fan (or a sports fan) I don't recall ever hearing him speak in the past. Has he always sounded so unintelligent?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRpdZ9K4LIg |
Oversized men, particularly blacks, often sound like daleks.
Because their vocal chords grow too big. |
Not sure it is the quality of his voice that is being commented on.
More the fact that he talks like a brain-dead asshole. |
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Chaparrastique
Joined: 01 Jan 2014
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| Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2014 6:58 am Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
| There is no evidence that he supports reform. |
Its mostly just a feeling, but for example, he's sped up the opening of free trade zones and increased economic co-operation with China and other countries. Signed all kinds of trade deals last October.
There's been a lot of infrastructure- new roads, apartments and hospitals being built since he got into power. Unprecedented in the past few decades.
There are even signs he plans a future tourism industry, mostly targeted at Chinese. Even building a new airport terminal.
The fact that he spent formative years in Europe and loves baseball shows that he is at least a bit different to his father and grandfather.
He has to do whatever it takes to cement his grip on power in the short term- because he's suddenly inherited pole position in a pool of old sharks, but in the long run I think he has positive plans for the country. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2014 8:17 am Post subject: |
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| Chaparrastique wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| There is no evidence that he supports reform. |
Its mostly just a feeling, but for example, he's sped up the opening of free trade zones and increased economic co-operation with China and other countries. Signed all kinds of trade deals last October.
There's been a lot of infrastructure- new roads, apartments and hospitals being built since he got into power. Unprecedented in the past few decades.
There are even signs he plans a future tourism industry, mostly targeted at Chinese. Even building a new airport terminal.
The fact that he spent formative years in Europe and loves baseball shows that he is at least a bit different to his father and grandfather.
He has to do whatever it takes to cement his grip on power in the short term- because he's suddenly inherited pole position in a pool of old sharks, but in the long run I think he has positive plans for the country. |
You know who else spent a lot of time in Europe before coming to power, Assad, just saying. His dad loved sports and western movies, the kid loves sports and Disney, so what.
So this is all based on the fat boy giving you warm fuzzy feelings? He's already replaced much of the senior leadership, so I don't think that is his big concern, and building massive tourism infrastructure like ski resorts while your people starve is hard to spin into positive plans. This is also forgetting his not long ago provocations.
"Consider just how repressive a regime has to be to make North Koreans pine for the libertine days of Kim Jong Il’s reign. Following his death, clandestine news services report “increased crackdowns on defectors, increased restrictions on the use of Chinese cell phones, tighter border patrols, [...] stricter regulation of markets and movements,” and increased mobilizations of city dwellers to labor in the fields. To enforce the crackdown, as the L.A. Times previously reported, the regime is increasingly relying on public executions of would-be refugees, and collective punishment of their spouses, parents, and children. Harlan adds:
North Koreans who attempt to enter China and travel to the South have long been subjected to punishment, often sentencing in one of the North’s detention camps. But after Kim Jong Il’s death this past December, according to information from recent defectors, government authorities visited towns and described a more severe policy: No longer would the North grant leniency to those who say they are simply visiting China to get money or medicine. During the 100-day mourning period for the Dear Leader, not only would captured escapees be punished — so, too, would their families.
The regime tightened restrictions on markets during Kim Jong Il’s mourning period, and hasn’t relaxed them since. Although most North Koreans now depend on these markets for their survival, the new restrictions coincide with an especially hungry year, due to a combination of mismanagement, obscenely misspent wealth, and severe drought, which somehow isn’t causing starvation in South Korea. For a while, it seemed that North Korea had brokered a deal to freeze its WMD activities in exchange for some food aid, but it chose to test a missile instead, and the deal fell apart.
This may not sound like glasnost to you, but the AP’s Jean H. Lee is tweeting and filing “news” stories from Pyongyang about matters of deeper significance: her sightings of Snoopy backpacks and Mickey Mouse sweaters. In a closed city where the elite have long had access to Sony TVs, Omega watches, and Mercedes cars, Lee concedes that these things “may seem trivial,” but then suggests that they represent “a seismic shift” in attitudes inside the regime.
- See more at: http://freekorea.us/category/kim-jong-un/page/3/#sthash.pnVtHt39.dpuf"
http://freekorea.us/category/kim-jong-un/page/3/ |
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jvalmer
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2014 6:44 pm Post subject: |
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It's like people expect change to happen overnight in this internet age... It takes time to change, like a generations time (that's roughly 25 years), and we'll either be right or wrong.
My prediction is when the time is right, he'll ask for some kind of amnesty/asylum for most of the his friends in high places in exchange for unification/peace. But then again it isn't going to tomorrow, it will be in the year 2045... |
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Chaparrastique
Joined: 01 Jan 2014
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| Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2014 1:24 am Post subject: |
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Wonder how long the friendship will last now that he's turned into a complete buffoon. |
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Smithington
Joined: 14 Dec 2011
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| Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2014 7:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Chaparrastique wrote: |
Wonder how long the friendship will last now that he's turned into a complete buffoon. |
He's America's very own dancing buffoon. Korea gave us Psy, we reciprocated with Rodman. One is as ridiculous as the other. And I bet the Norks are having a laugh at his expense. We know Koreans' attitudes towards blacks and Rodman fits their stereotype of the strange black man. The fool might have taken out his lip rings before arriving in Pyeongyang. Yet he talks like he's a great statesman who will eventually "open the country up to the world." Yeah, that's it. Mandela, Gorbachev and Rodman. 
I pity the poor Korean translator who has to grasp what Rodman is saying. Christ, I can barely understand his English. Good luck to Mr. Choi from East Pyeongyang.
The man be a fool. |
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jvalmer
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2014 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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Don't know why you guys, and the media, is giving Rodman such a hard time. He's just a basketball player and probably has more influence on Kim Jung-Eun than any diplomat ever has. I believe the two are genuinely friends, and friends generally don't go dictating how you run your own home.
Remember guys, he's just a basketball player that wants to introduce a higher level of basketball in NK, not some diplomat. And most diplomats going to NK have pretty much failed in obtaining their goals. |
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