NEW YORK CITY – Dennis Rodman’s February visit to North Korea is the gift that keeps on giving. Thanks to an exclusive dispatch from Young Pioneer Tours partner and tour-guide Joseph Ferris III, NK News can reveal new insights into Rodman’s trip and further evidence of North Korea’s long love of NBA basketball.
While leading a recent trip to Pyongyang, where he was leading a group for YPT, Ferris and Co. took in the Grand People’s Study House — and happened upon this book featuring an illustration of what appears to be a North Korean wearing the uniform of Chicago Bulls shooting guard/small forward Richard “Rip” Hamilton.
Some context from Ferris:
“I have been to the Study House several times, usually being shown around by a pretty local guide, but on this trip we were given the tour by the Study House director. He told us he personally showed the Google delegation around, as well as the Harlem Globetrotters. He was proud to show us [this] North Korean book on basketball and the NBA, and as you can see in the photos, the book shows how the game is played.”
A player who looks suspiciously like Michael Jordan (who was offered the Rodman trip before Rodman, but declined) demonstrating an offensive maneuver
Later that day, the group visited the embalmed bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il at the Palace of the Sun mausoleum, where, as Ferris tells us, the basketball ante was upped, rather breathtakingly.
Here’s Ferris again:
“One of the guys on my tour signed the guest book in the mausoleum A local official got excited and flipped to the previous page which was signed by Dennis Rodman:
‘This has been a second coming of life. Thank you, thank you.’