Dennis Rodman is filming a documentary in Best Korea with the Globetrotters

WTH.....

Dennis Rodman’s bizarre trip to North Korea: Is it also unethical?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...rre-trip-to-north-korea-is-it-also-unethical/

American basketball star Dennis Rodman and several members of the Harlem Globetrotters are in North Korea, where they will film for a forthcoming Vice/HBO program and promote some “basketball diplomacy,” including pick-up games in Pyongyang.

Whatever the trip’s impact, it reminds me of a debate that I’ve heard many times among people who work on issues relating to North Korea: What are the ethical pros and cons of visiting the world’s most oppressive country? Although there is no consensus view and a significant minority of North Korea-watchers say that visiting the country helps to open it up, I most frequently hear experts argue that tourism is unethical because it directly funds and offers free propaganda to the regime.

Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations, with whom I exchanged e-mails several months ago about the ethics of visiting North Korea, wrote back that “there are plenty of ethical dilemmas and few answers when it comes to dealing with the DPRK.” He explained, “Any interaction with North Korea involves an element of moral hazard. It was a central question that dominated and polarized the humanitarian aid community from the start of its interaction with North Korea in response to the famine in the mid-1990s.”

Quotes from the people who set up Rodman’s visit might give you a sense of its mission, which certainly so far seems to emphasize promoting Vice and Rodman a bit more than actual track-two diplomacy. (That doesn’t mean Rodman’s trip must be necessarily bad, but I make this point to explain why I’m treating it as an act of tourism and commerce rather than research or diplomacy.)

“Is sending the Harlem Globetrotters and Dennis Rodman to the DPRK strange? In a word, yes,” said Vice founder Shane Smith, who visited the country in 2009 for Vice, which has made a name for itself by blending journalism with adventure tourism. “But finding common ground on the basketball court is a beautiful thing.”

Rodman’s agent told the Associated Press, “When I discussed with Dennis the invite to go to North Korea and meet with Kim Jong and the Korean national basketball team as part of a documentary for HBO, he knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a fun shoot around playing basketball and would give him the chance to speak directly to Kim Jong that the only way to go is with peace not war.” “Kim Jong” is presumably North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun, whom its difficult to imagine meeting with Rodman.

So is tourism to North Korea ethically good, actively unethical or in some neutral middle ground? Here’s what people smarter and more knowledgable than myself have said about it.

The debate often turns on money. Trips to North Korea are expensive and must go entirely through the North Korean government, which badly needs every scrap of foreign currency it can get. Handing several thousand dollars to a regime that runs a rogue nuclear weapons program and a vast network of gulags is distasteful for obvious reasons, though some point out that this is a relatively small amount of money unlikely to determine Kim Jong Eun’s ultimate fate. Either way, there are larger issues here.

 

The only place Kim Jong Chub was explosive was the bathroom.