Former professional basketball player Dennis Rodman spoke out in an exclusive interview with ABC News about his recent trip to North Korea, suggesting that he is partly responsible for the reclusive nation’s release of American college student Otto Warmbier, who died last Monday, just days after being medically evacuated from a North Korean prison.

“I was just so happy to see the kid released,” Rodman told “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan of when he first learned of Warmbier’s release. “Later that day, that’s when we found out he was ill, no one knew that. We jumped up and down … Some good things came of this trip.”

Warmbier, who was released on the same day that Rodman arrived in North Korea for a brief visit, was sent back to the U.S. in a state of unresponsive wakefulness, according to doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.