Canadian plans hockey tournament in Pyongyang

KBC has long supported sports as a means to building business contacts between the DPRK and the world. (See our 2006 golf event in Pyongyang.) So we were pleased to read this in Reuters: 

A Canadian man behind a series of trips to North Korea by basketball hall of famer Dennis Rodman is organizing an ice hockey tournament that may draw former National Hockey League (NHL) players to the isolated country.

Announcement of the event comes days after North Korea said it had detained U.S. university student Otto Warmbier, 21, for what state media described as a "hostile act".
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The tournament, scheduled for March 7-11 in the capital, Pyongyang, will raise money for sporting equipment for disabled North Korean athletes, said Michael Spavor, who runs the Paektu Cultural Exchange, which promotes engagement with North Korea.

Read the rest here. 

This comes at a time when Canada and North Korea are not on good terms, what with the sentencing of a Canadian pastor to a life sentence with hard labor recently being given. The game could be an opportunity for some high ranking official from Ottawa to fly over and bring the pastor back, as is the usual plan when Westerners are detained and sentenced to long prison sentences in the DPRK, but we're not holding our breath.