--- title: Sylvester Stallone Has a Cameo in North Korea Film description: A surprising face makes a cameo in a video the Trump Administration made for Kim Jong Un: Sylvester Stallone. canonical: https://time.com/5309975/donald-trump-kim-jong-un-sylvester-stallone/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-06-12T16:12:45.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T20:33:04.455Z article:section: Politics og:title: There's a Good Reason Sylvester Stallone Has a Cameo in Trump's North Korea Film og:description: Kim Jong Un is a fan og:url: https://time.com/5309975/donald-trump-kim-jong-un-sylvester-stallone/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt198bc85ff0a01845/698932e00a4a2231ae9d2f25/gettyimages-971886374.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TOPSHOT-SINGAPORE-US-NKOREA-DIPLOMACY-SUMMIT og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: There's a Good Reason Sylvester Stallone Has a Cameo in Trump's North Korea Film twitter:description: Kim Jong Un is a fan twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt198bc85ff0a01845/698932e00a4a2231ae9d2f25/gettyimages-971886374.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # There's a Good Reason Sylvester Stallone Has a Cameo in Trump's North Korea Film by [Ryan Teague Beckwith](https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/) ## Ryan Teague Beckwith Jun 12, 2018 4:12 PM UTC  North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (L) shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump after taking part in a signing ceremony at the end of their historic U.S.-North Korea summit, at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore on June 12, 2018. North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (L) shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump after taking part in a signing ceremony at the end of their historic U.S.-North Korea summit, at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore on June 12, 2018.Anthony Wallace/AFP—Getty Images by [Ryan Teague Beckwith](https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/) ## Ryan Teague Beckwith Jun 12, 2018 4:12 PM UTC A surprising face makes a cameo in [the four-minute video](https://www.vox.com/world/2018/6/12/17452876/trump-kim-jong-un-meeting-north-korea-video) the Trump Administration made to persuade Kim Jong Un to rejoin the world community: Sylvester Stallone. Around the 2:45 mark in the video, narrated as though it were a movie trailer, a brief still image shows President Donald Trump standing next to Stallone in the Oval Office. The image comes from Trump’s May [pardon of boxing legend Jack Johnson](http://time.com/5290487/trump-pardon-jack-johnson/), which the _Rocky_ star personally lobbied for. As jarring as the image might be in the frame of traditional diplomacy, it actually makes sense given the audience of one at which the trailer is aimed. The North Korean autocrat is known to be a fan of Western pop culture, and the _Rocky_ series specifically. In [a 2017 interview](http://www.businessinsider.com/dennis-rodman-says-kim-jong-un-loves-karaoke-tv-theme-tunes-and-80s-music-2017-5), basketball star Dennis Rodman said that Kim had a “13-piece girls band with violins” playing classic rock by Jimi Hendrix and The Doors. “When I first went, the live band only played two songs for four hours: the theme songs from _Rocky_ and _Dallas_,” he said. In 2012, the Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, [reported that a 100-minute program](http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html%5Fdir/2012/07/13/2012071301241.html) on North Korean Central TV included around three minutes’ worth of scenes from _Rocky IV_ while a group of 10 female instrumentalists played “Gonna Fly Now” from the movie’s soundtrack. The four-minute film that Trump showed Tuesday also featured stock footage of a [dunking basketball player](https://www.gettyimages.com/license/578-44), another Kim obsession. As unusual as the video was, it may have worked. [Kim remarked about the day’s events](http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/entertainment/trump-shows-kim-video-laying-stakes-summit-article-1.4032624) through a translator that “any people in the world that will think of this as a scene from a … science fiction movie.” Trump was also a fan. “We had it made up. I showed it to him today, actually during the meeting, toward the end of the meeting and I think he loved it,” he said during a news conference. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5309975/donald-trump-kim-jong-un-sylvester-stallone/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5309975/donald-trump-kim-jong-un-sylvester-stallone/"},"headline":"There's a Good Reason Sylvester Stallone Has a Cameo in Trump's North Korea Film","datePublished":"2018-06-12T16:12:45.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T20:33:04.455Z","description":"Kim Jong Un is a fan","url":"https://time.com/5309975/donald-trump-kim-jong-un-sylvester-stallone/","keywords":["North Korea","Kim Jong Un","Sylvester Stallone","Donald Trump","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt198bc85ff0a01845/698932e00a4a2231ae9d2f25/gettyimages-971886374.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ryan Teague Beckwith","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt198bc85ff0a01845/698932e00a4a2231ae9d2f25/gettyimages-971886374.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"TOPSHOT-SINGAPORE-US-NKOREA-DIPLOMACY-SUMMIT","caption":"TOPSHOT-SINGAPORE-US-NKOREA-DIPLOMACY-SUMMIT","creditText":"Anthony Wallace/AFP—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/north-korea/","name":"North Korea"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5309975/donald-trump-kim-jong-un-sylvester-stallone/","name":"There's a Good Reason Sylvester Stallone Has a Cameo in Trump's North Korea Film"}}]}] ```