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The Hermit Kingdom
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The Hermit Kingdom

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VICE correspondent Ryan Duffy travels to Pyongyang alongside Dennis Rodman and three Harlem Globetrotters for a basketball exhibition arranged as an act of informal diplomacy with North Korea. The cameras follow the group through state minders, staged sightseeing, and a surreal exhibition game attended by Kim Jong-un himself, with Rodman courtside beside the young leader. Duffy narrates the strangeness of moving through a country where every interaction is managed, from empty highways to a Pyongyang department store stocked for show rather than use. The film doesn't pretend to explain North Korea from the inside; instead it documents what happens when American celebrity culture collides with the regime's propaganda machinery, and lets the absurdity of Rodman calling Kim Jong-un a friend speak for itself. Interviews with Vice staff and glimpses of ordinary Pyongyang life fill out the edges of a trip that reads as both diplomatic curiosity and media stunt. It remains one of the stranger documents of access journalism into the country.