It’s likely that the first you heard of our TV show,
VICE on HBO, was when news outlets around the world reported that we took Bad-as-I-Wanna-Be NBA Hall-of-Famer Dennis Rodman to North Korea, along with members of the legendary Harlem Globetrotters, to take on the Hermit Kingdon’s national team in a friendly, if entirely absurd, experiment in basketball diplomacy. As you probably know, the enigmatic young ruler of the country, Kim Jong Un, showed up to the game, making us the first American news organization to meet him. It was pretty much the most thrilling thing that could have happened, and when pictures were beamed back to Brooklyn that day, the poured-concrete floors of our offices rippled in cracks and dents as our jaws collectively hit the floor.
Our trip to DPRK is the glorious capstone of the first season of
VICE, and yesterday, we learned that the show got picked up for a
second season. Frankly, we couldn’t be more excited to bring you another set of stories about international news and culture straight from “the canon’s mouth,” as old-timey journalists used to say.
But tonight is about tonight, so tune in at 11 PM and get in on the action. While the highlight of the trip was certainly the thousands of screaming fans watching as the two teams duked it out, our trip to North Korea was as much about getting a firsthand glimpse inside one of the most mysterious and least understood countries in the world. Here’s a couple snippets of what to expect. And be sure to check out the
Reddit AMA that producer Jason Mojica and director of photography Jake Burghart are doing today at noon.
