[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 94-95]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 VISITING NORTH KOREA IS TERRIBLE IDEA

  (Mr. ENGEL asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, Dennis S. Rodman of NBA fame has announced 
that he and 10 or so other basketball players are going to North Korea, 
he said, to visit his friend, the notorious butcher and dictator, Kim 
Jong Un of North Korea.
  Bringing American basketball to North Korea, a rogue state which has 
nuclear weapons, which starves its own people and imprisons them and 
throws them in jail, bringing American basketball there and sitting 
down with a dictator like Mr. Kim would be the equivalent of taking 
Adolf Hitler to lunch. This is really a terrible thing, a terrible 
idea, and it makes us gloss over the terrible suffering of the North 
Korean people and just ignore it and say, Well, we are going to play 
basketball and we are going to make this guy look legitimate.
  In a rambling discussion today on one of the networks, Rodman said 
that he didn't even care that an American, Mr. Kenneth Bae, was 
imprisoned in North Korea. At the very least we would hope that this 
American who is imprisoned for no reason by this brutal dictator would 
be released.

[[Page 95]]

  We should not be clinking glasses or playing basketball with this 
dictator. We should be demanding that an American citizen who committed 
no crime be released.

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