Report: Dennis Rodman’s Friendship With Kim Jong Un May Have Ended After Drunken Pyongyang Hotel Incident

Dennis Rodman’s strange basketball bromance with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un reportedly came to an end not with a diplomatic crisis, a missile test, or a spy scandal, but with an allegedly catastrophic night at a hotel.

The bizarre story resurfaced this week after Washington Post foreign policy columnist Josh Rogin claimed that Kim cut ties with Rodman following the former NBA star’s final trip to North Korea.

“Kim Jong Un broke off his friendship with Rodman after the last visit where Rodman allegedly got super drunk and allegedly defecated on the hotel room floor,” Rogin wrote on X, adding that the incident would make Rodman unlikely to serve as any kind of back-channel messenger in future U.S.-North Korea diplomacy.

So there it is: one of the strangest unofficial diplomatic relationships in modern history may have ended in the least diplomatic way imaginable.

The allegation itself is not new. It traces back to reports following Rodman’s controversial 2014 trip to North Korea, when he visited Pyongyang with a group of former NBA players for an exhibition game celebrating Kim’s birthday.

The Korea Times reported in February 2014, citing an unnamed source connected to Free North Korea Radio, that Rodman became heavily intoxicated while staying at Pyongyang’s Koryo Hotel. According to that source, Rodman allegedly vomited, urinated, and defecated in a hotel hallway.

The details were never independently verified, and North Korea has not publicly confirmed the story. Still, the account has lingered for years as one of the most infamous footnotes in Rodman’s already surreal North Korea chapter.

Rodman entered an alcohol rehabilitation facility shortly after returning to the United States from that trip. His agent confirmed the move at the time, and Rodman had already drawn criticism for an emotional, rambling CNN interview from North Korea in which he appeared to suggest detained American Kenneth Bae was responsible for his own imprisonment. Rodman later apologized.

Before the reported fallout, Rodman had enjoyed unusually close access to Kim Jong Un. He first traveled to North Korea in 2013 and later described Kim, a known basketball fan, as a “friend for life.” Rodman returned several times, appeared publicly with Kim, and promoted what he called basketball diplomacy.

His 2014 visit was especially controversial. Rodman and several former NBA players staged an exhibition game for Kim’s birthday, and Rodman even sang “Happy Birthday” to the dictator.

For a time, Rodman seemed to believe basketball could do what traditional diplomacy could not. It was an odd idea, but not entirely meaningless: very few Americans had personal access to Kim, and Rodman somehow did.

But if Rogin’s account is accurate, that relationship may have ended not over geopolitics, sanctions, nuclear weapons, or human rights, but over one drunken hotel disaster in Pyongyang.

The most sensational claims remain based on unnamed sources and secondary reporting. There is no public statement from Kim Jong Un confirming that he ended the friendship over the alleged hotel incident.

Still, the story’s return is a reminder that Rodman’s North Korea saga was always part diplomacy, part celebrity circus, and part fever dream. For a brief moment, a Hall of Fame rebounder from the Chicago Bulls became one of America’s strangest links to the world’s most isolated regime.

And then, reportedly, the whole thing went down the toilet.

Or possibly near one.