Both North Korea and Dennis Rodman know the pain of ostracization.

When he was child growing up in a Dallas housing project, Rodman was relentlessly teased by his peers. Because of the way his body moved when he played pinball, he earned the nickname “worm.” It’s stuck with him ever since. He had big ears, and he definitely wasn’t tall. His father abandoned him and fled to the Philippines. At age 19, all five-foot-nine of him worked a janitorial job at a Dallas airport.

Then he rocketed in height and turned into an unlikely basketball sensation. He won three championships with Michael Jordan. But over the course of his career he also turned into something more than a star athlete. Isolated, misunderstood, and profoundly weird, he became the bad boy of the NBA.

Rodman has in his post-NBA career become a sad version of his former self. No one in his life seems able to reach a man enveloped in depression and alcohol abuse. But all his confidants agree: Somewhere in there is a really very sweet man.

So what is this giant of a man doing serenading North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on his birthday? After a trip last year to the hermit nation, Rodman declared himself friends for life with Kim Jong Un. Last week he returned for more of the same: basketball and media fireworks. In what might be loosely described as an“appearance” on CNN, Rodman suffered a meltdown. Profanities rained down on Chris Cuomo as Rodman explained how he didn’t care much for the CNN host’s opinions about his trip.

But why is Rodman doing this in the first place? As he’s learned over the course of his career, there are many ways to get media publicity-and the paychecks that come with it-but why he’s using North Korea to do it has been something of a mystery.

In Kim, Dennis Rodman has found someone with a reputation very similar to his own. Isolated from the world, he is repeatedly ridiculed and denounced for barbarity. Earlier this month, the world’s media exploded over what turned out to be in all likelihood false allegations that Kim had executed his uncle by setting free 120 starved dogs on him. The story was just weird enough to pass muster with the world’s blogs. It fit the preconceived notions of the country: utterly weird, utterly depraved, utterly fascinating. The same thing could be said of Dennis Rodman and his treatment in the media.

Rodman and North Korea have developed a shared strategy for survival: publicity bombs. North Korea threatens to fire missiles at the United States and South Korea and detonates nuclear weapons. In return, it generally gains diplomatic concessions. Rodman uses a similar tactic of outrage to receive his paychecks. By maintaining his media profile as a bad boy beyond repair, the Reality shows keep calling.

Misery loves company.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 01/14/2014