Those who remember the ping-pong diplomacy between America and Red China will hesitate to dismiss entirely the possibility that something could be afoot in respect of Dennis Rodman’s visit to Pyongyang. But nothing that happened when the United States Table Tennis Team went to China — it received the invitation suddenly in 1971, while in Japan — was quite comparable to the display by Mr. Rodman. The former star of the Chicago Bulls kanoodled with the Korean kommisar at a basketball “game.” Reuters quoted the Communist Chinese news agengy Xinhua reporting that Rodman called Kim “very honest” and called him an “awesome kid.”

It was such a display that we sent a cable to the journalist we trust the most on this beat, Melanie Kirkpatrick, a longtime Asia hand and a veteran of the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of “Escape From North Korea,” recently out from Encounter, in which she relates how a modern underground railroad run by religious Christians is using the techniques of the underground railroad that transported American slaves to freedom to help North Koreans escape from the dungeon country that Mr. Rodman has been romanticizing.

The “real” North Korea, Ms. Kirkpatrick wired us, “is better seen in two other events that happened this week but got a lot less publicity than the visit of Dennis Rodman.” One was the message sent Saturday to the top American commander in Free Korea, General Thurman, warning of “miserable destruction” if the United States went through with routine military drills scheduled this month with South Korea troops. She noted that this comes on top of a test of a long range ballistic missile in December and a nuclear test in February. This comes, she notes, amid “lots of bellicose rhetoric threatening the U.S. specifically.”

Second is the release by the United States Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and DigitalGlobe of what Ms. Kirkpatrick characterizes as “incredible satellite photos” showing that Camp 25, a concentration camp for political prisoners, has increased in size by 72% in recent years. She reports estimates that there are between 150,000 and 200,000 political prisoners in North Korea, being held for crimes that can include possessing a Bible, speaking disrespectfully of the Kims, or listening to a foreign radio broadcast. “His children and his parents often go with him, as NK believes in punishing three generations of a family,” Ms. Kirkpatrick says.

She also reminds of what a pro the new dictator is at manipulating public opinion abroad. The business about being seen in public with his “wife”— a fashionably dressed young woman carrying a designer handbag, no less — is part of it. The welcome to Mr. Rodman is no doubt part of it as well. Meanwhile, Ms. Kirkpatrick writes, “he’s cracked down so hard on NKs who try to leave that there was a huge drop in the number of NKs who made it to South on the underground railroad.” She tells us that the number who got there in 2012 plunged to 1,500 from the 2,700 who made it in 2011. One of the first acts of Mr. Kim was to issue a shoot to kill order on the border: anyone spotted fleeing to China was to be shot, no questions asked.

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No doubt there is a temptation to grasp for straws in the kind of display that Mr. Rodman has just put on. Experience has taught us to trust the hardliners. We remember when the East German communist party boss, Erich Honecker, made his first visit to West Germany. The Western press was agog with delight. One editor, Enno von Loewenstern of Die Welt, thought otherwise and called for Herr Honecker to be arrested as soon as he set foot on Free German soil and put on trial for the same kind of “shoot to kill” order that Comrade Kim put out. People laughed, but within a few years, East Germany had collapsed and Herr Honecker was forced to return to stand trial. He was spared a verdict by cancer of his liver. Where will Dennis Rodman be when the props fall away and justice is served on Kim Jong Un?