Who is the former NBA star who has unofficially served as a peace ambassador with North Korea?

North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un is a huge basketball fan and loves the Chicago Bulls. Despite the tension with the United States, a former NBA player was able to visit the Asian country several times to serve as an unofficial peace ambassador.

Dennis Rodman first made the trip to North Korea in February 2013 along with several members of Vice Media. Rodman and his crew became the first Americans to meet Kim since he became the supreme leader. He returned seven months later and met Kim's daughter, Kim Ju-ae.

"My mission is to break the ice between hostile countries," Rodman told Sports Illustrated that same year.

"Why it's been left to me to smooth things over? I don't know. Dennis Rodman, of all people. Keeping us safe is really not my job, it's the (Barack Obama's) job."

In the last decade, Dennis Rodman has made several trips to North Korea in 2014, 2017 and 2018. Rodman was so influential that he even helped facilitate the release of Kenneth Bae. Bae is an American-born South Korean evangelist who was convicted of trying to overthrow the North Korean regime.

In 2014, Rodman also brought a handful of NBA players for an exhibition game in the country. Players like Kenny Anderson, Vin Baker, Doug Christie, Sleepy Floyd, Craig Hodges, Clifford Robinson and Charles D. Smith played in front of Kim Jong-un.

There were even speculations that Rodman worked for the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA as an intelligence officer. However, the agency and the five-time NBA champ have not confirmed or denied the rumors.

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Did Dennis Rodman accidentally misname Kim Jong-un's daughter?

According to the reports from The Korea Times, a former South Korean intelligence official alleges that the world has been calling Kim Jong-un's daughter by the wrong name for years, thanks to a misunderstanding by former NBA star Dennis Rodman.

Choe Su-yong, who worked for the National Intelligence Service (NIS) until 2010, claims that Kim's daughter's real name is Eun-ju, not Ju-ae. He believes that Rodman, during one of his visits to North Korea, misunderstood the phrase "jeo-ae" (which means "that girl" in Korean) as the child's name and subsequently shared it with the media. While North Korean state media paints her as the "respected child" or "dear child" of the leader, Kim Jong-un's daughter's actual name remains a point of contention.

North Korea has its own rules for basketball

Kim Jong-un loves basketball so much that he created a new set of rules for the sport in his country. These might be the key to making basketball more entertaining for fans.

Here are some of the rules of North Korean basketball:

1. Each quarter is only eight minutes long.
2. Slam dunks are worth three points.
3. Shots from beyond the arc are worth four points if the ball doesn't touch the rim.
4. One point is deducted from the score if a player misses a free throw.
5. Any shots made from the field in the last three seconds of the game are worth eight points.
6. Games don't have overtime, and they can end in a tie.

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