THE crowd gathered at the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium on January 8th made unlikely spectators for a basketball game. Dressed in suits and ties, the 14,000 people filling the stands in North Korea’s capital held neither hotdogs nor giant foam fingers. Applause for the two squads, a motley crew of former American National Basketball Association (NBA) stars and street-ball players, and then the North Korean team, was tightly orchestrated. But when the country’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, entered the stadium, the atmosphere changed. “It’s just really shocking, an overwhelming experience to see how much power that guy has in this country,” said Dennis Rodman, the provocative former professional American player who was chiefly responsible for the spectacle. “All [Mr Kim] has to do is get up and they go nuts.” This is Mr Rodman’s fourth trip to North Korea, an ostentatious tour with an athletic entourage which is estimated to cost about $1m*. He is the highest-profile American to have met the youthful Mr Kim, and this has cast Mr Rodman into a position of perhaps unwitting ambassadorial significance. He labels his own visits as “basketball diplomacy”, an opportunity for cultural exchange with the secretive state. He claims to have no political motive.

But his visits have drawn criticism from near and far by people who worry about North Korea’s appalling human-rights record and its pursuit of a nuclear arsenal. In a last-minute appeal in which he asked Mr Rodman to abandon the charade, Eliot Engel, an American congressman, likened playing the exhibition game to inviting Hitler to lunch. “What you seem to be implying is that business as usual is OK. That it’s OK to enslave people. That it is OK to torture people,” Mr Engel told Mr Rodman through an interview with the New York Times. David Stern of the NBA distanced his organisation from the excursion, saying that although sporting events can be helpful in bridging divides, this one is not. Mr Rodman has also been rebuked for failing to use his influence to assist Kenneth Bae, an American missionary who has been detained in North Korea for “anti-state” crimes. (He compounded the sense of insult with an apparently drunken rant against Mr Bae, during a live interview with CNN from Pyongyang. The next day Mr Rodman explained that indeed he had been feeling tired and emotional, and apologised.)

None of this deterred Mr Rodman during the match. Ever flamboyant, the tattooed 52-year-old alumnus of the Chicago Bulls rounded off a curious public address by singing “Happy Birthday” to the “marshal”, using Mr Kim’s local honorific. It is believed that Mr Kim is in his early 30s, but like so much else about the dictator, who inherited power when his father, Kim Jong Il, died in 2011, the details are murky. “Yes he is a great leader, he provides for his people here in this country and thank God the people here love the marshal,” Mr Rodman somewhat incoherently told the crowd, which included Mr Kim, his wife Ri Sol Ju, a rare appearance for his brother, Kim Jong Chol, and plenty of senior officials. As a birthday present, Mr Rodman presented Mr Kim with five bottles of Bad Ass Vodka, his own brand, with their images etched into the glass.

Joining Mr Rodman on court were six former NBA players, most of them past their playing prime and well into their 40s. They might include a few names familiar to American basketball enthusiasts of the 1990s (Sleepy Floyd stands out), but today they are invested in more diverse pursuits. Vin Baker’s professional career came to an end over a battle with alcoholism; he is now a pastor at a church in New York. Doug Christie has lately been overshadowed by his wife’s participation in a reality-television show, “Basketball Wives L.A.”. Last year an ex-All Star, Kenny Anderson, lost his job coaching high school basketball after he was arrested on suspicion of driving drunk. Other members of the squad included Cliff Robinson, Craig Hodges, Charles D. Smith as well as four never-pro players.

In the first half of the friendly game, which Rodman dedicated to his “best friend” (the birthday boy, of course), the Americans scored just 39 points, losing to the North Koreans’ 47. (One spectator judged that the Americans had rather “phoned it in”.) In the second half the teams were mixed and Mr Rodman sat beside Mr Kim. Their discussion was chiefly about basketball, according to Mr Rodman, including plans for a more ambitious game in the summer: for an audience of 120,000. Mr Kim then invited Mr Rodman and a small delegation to go skiing at the recently constructed resort in the remote east of the country, Masik Pass, which is said to have opened on January 1st.

All of this is very cosy, at least for the strange-looking men involved. But it seems unlikely to be helpful in re-establishing official relations between North Korea and America, despite Mr Rodman’s hopes. There is a long way to go. The two countries have been estranged since the Korean War ended, more than 60 years ago. The secretive and unpredictable nature of North Korea’s politics is unnerving, and its nuclear-weapons programme unacceptable to the Americans. The dramatic purge of Jang Song Thaek, Mr Kim’s uncle, who was abruptly executed in December, has done nothing to soothe worries abroad, as it revealed deep schisms within the upper echelons of the North Korean state. On January 7th America announced that it would send another 800 soldiers and 40 tanks to South Korea, in addition to the 28,000 troops it already has stationed there, as part of the country’s commitment to security on the peninsula.

In Pyongyang those who were unable to attend the game could read about it on the front page of the Rodong Sinmun, a state-run newspaper, or watch it on television. Pak Ji Yoon, a North Korean national who would not give her real name, guesses that while little is known about Mr Rodman, his presence is “not bad” for the relations of the two countries involved. Ms Pak personally finds Mr Rodman’s facial piercings off-putting and “kind of crazy”, but she notes that Kim Jong Un seems unusually friendly towards him. She would not be the first to say it: Mr Rodman has become America's least likely diplomat.

* Clarification: An earlier version of this post said that Mr Rodman's trip was estimated to have cost his hosts about $1m. These costs were borne by Paddy Power, who had at one point contracted to play host to the tour; not by the North Korean government. This article was emended on January 13th.

(Picture credit: AFP PHOTO / KCNA VIA KNS)