North Korea is awaiting another visit by former NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman in his first trip to the country since Donald Trump's rise to the Presidency.
Wearing sunglasses and a black T-shirt advertising a marijuana cybercurrency, Rodman passed through immigration on Tuesday at Beijing Airport, from where he was expected to fly to the North Korean capital Pyongyang.
"I'm just trying to open the door," Rodman told reporters.
"My purpose is to actually to see if I can keep bringing sports to North Korea, so that's the main thing."
Rodman said earlier in a tweet: "I'm back! Thanks to my sponsor www.potcoin.com." Rodman added in the tweet that he would "discuss my mission upon my return to the USA".
Rodman has received the red-carpet treatment in his previous visits but has been roundly criticised for doing so during a time of high tensions over North Korea's weapons programs.
His entourage included Joseph Terwilliger, a professor who had accompanied Rodman on previous trips to North Korea.
In Tokyo, a visiting senior US official said his government was aware of Rodman's trip and wished him well.
"Dennis Rodman is a private citizen. We are aware of his visit. We wish him well, but we have issued travel warnings to Americans suggesting they not travel to North Korea for their own safety," US Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon told reporters.
In 2014, Rodman arranged a basketball game with other former NBA players and North Koreans and regaled leader Kim Jong Un with a rendition of "Happy Birthday". On the same trip, he suggested an American missionary was at fault for his own imprisonment in North Korea, remarks for which he later apologised.
A foreign ministry official who spoke to the AP in Pyongyang confirmed Rodman was expected to arrive on Tuesday but could not provide details.
Any visit by a high-profile American is a political minefield and Rodman has been criticised for failing to use his influence on leaders who are otherwise isolated diplomatically from the rest of the world.
Rodman's T-shirt advertised potcoin, one of a growing number of cybercurrencies used to buy and sell marijuana in state-regulated markets.
North Korea has been hailed by marijuana news outlets and British tabloids as a pothead paradise and maybe even the next Amsterdam of pot tourism. But the claim that marijuana is legal in North Korea is not true: The penal code lists it as a controlled substance in the same category as cocaine and heroin.
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