Former NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman apologized on Monday after being slammed for not using his personal friendship with leader Kim Jong Un to rescue a detained American missionary in North Korea, the Associated Press reported.
Rodman made a visit to North Korea last week to participate in a game during Kim's birthday celebrations. Along with a bunch of retired NBA players, Rodman was criticized in the U.S. for attending the exhibition game in honor of Kim's birthday because of North Korea's human rights record and its development of nuclear weapons.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry I couldn't do anything," Rodman told media on his arrival at Beijing airport from a weeklong trip. "It's not my fault. I'm sorry. I just want to do some good stuff, that's all I want to do."
According to the AP, Charles D. Smith, one of the players, accepted the controversial commentary surrounding the trip and said Rodman, "opened the door and he did some missteps along the way."
Dedicating a "Happy Birthday" song to Kim at the exhibition game at Pyongyang stadium was completely Rodman's idea and decision, Smith said in a Beijing interview.
"I think that it might not have been the right thing to do, but he did it ... if it was done in private it would be different, but when it's done in the open like that, people are going to have opinions," he said.
Kenneth Bae, the missionary in poor health who has been detained for more than a year for "anti-state crimes," could have been freed through Rodman's influential friendship with Kim, the AP reported.
Apologizing last week for some comments he had made in a CNN interview about Bae being at fault, Rodman said he had been drinking and was upset since some of his teammates were being pressured to leave.
The controversy surrounding Bae was a "bad situation" that "overshadowed some of the things that we were doing," Smith said.
"Dennis is not a member of the State Department, he is not a member of the U.N.," Smith said. "For them to put the flag in his hands and say go and negotiate and talk about it, he probably would have made it worse, you know."
Smith said the team has been invited back by the North Korean officials "at any given time." Rodman said he would return to North Korea next month. Rodman cited his trip as a matter of goodwill on Monday, the AP reported.
"This is not a bad deal," he said. "I want to show people that no matter what's going on in the world, for one day, just one day, no politics, not all that stuff.
"I'm sorry for all the people and what's going on, I'm sorry," he continued. "I'm not the president, I'm not an ambassador, I'm just an individual that wants to show the world the fact that we can actually get along and be happy for one day."
Rodman and Kim struck up a friendship when the basketball-player-turned-celebrity first traveled to the secretive state last year, the AP reported.
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