Rodman Rips Obama: Former NBA Star Says President ‘Can’t Do Sh**’ About North Korea

Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star, told TMZ he's returning to North Korea on August 1. Rodman had previously traveled there with the Harlem Globetrotters for an HBO documentary series. After watching the game with leader Kim Jong-Un, he attended a party at the dictator's palace. Rodman said he plans to speak to Jong-un about freeing American Kenneth Bae, who was recently sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. The North Korean government claims Bae, a tour operator, was engaged in "hostile acts" in his time in the country. Human rights advocates in South Korea say Bae's mistake may have been taking photographs of impoverished children or public executions during his travels in North Korea.

"I'm gonna try to get the guy out," Rodman said, adding, "We got a black president [who] can't even go talk to [Jong-un]...Obama can't do sh**, I don't know why he won't go talk to him." He later told reporters, "Obama? F**k him!"

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"I'm calling on the Supreme Leader of North Korea or as I call him 'Kim', to do me a solid and cut Kenneth Bae loose," wrote Rodman in a Twitter post on Tuesday. The post came in response to a critical opinion article in the Seattle Times in which writer Thanh Tan asked Rodman to "[show] some sensitivity to Bae's plight" and ask the dictator to release him.

The State Department has asked that Bae, 44, be granted amnesty.

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On Rodman's previous 3-day excursion to North Korea, he was reportedly treated to lavish dinners - 15 courses of sushi, turkey, beef, kimchi, and roasted pig. In mid-April, Hyeonseo Lee, a North Korean defector, gave a lecture at the TED conference in California in which she described the mid-1990s famine which killed millions in North Korea. In her lecture, Lee recounted seeing a starved woman lying dead on the ground outside a train station while her starving child lay in her arms.

North Korea recently amped up its belligerent rhetoric toward South Korea and the United States, talk which came accompanied with a variety of military tests. When asked about North Korea's recent provocations of its southern neighbor, Rodman told GossipExtra.com that Jong-un "just wants to be loved. He just wants to sit down and talk. That's all."

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