Who Are the Real Korea Experts?

This week there has been some interesting debate over at Coming Anarchy and the Marmot’s Hole over what makes someone an “expert” of a specified country.  The main point of contention is if someone should be fluent in the language of the specified country to really be considered an expert opinion.All the Korea “experts” are coming out of the woodwork yet again on the news channels over the recent North Korean threats of conducting a nuclear test.  Just like July’s missile test incident these so called experts are woefully uninformed of the situation on the Korean peninsula.   If many of these people would just read the English language sources of information available out there they would be able to make much better opinions of what’s occurring on the peninsula.  But the so called experts don’t even do that much less even learn the language of the country that they claim to be an expert of.

The best expert opinion on the Korean peninsula I find to be Dr. Andrei Lankov, yet why isn’t he on the news channels?  What does Charles Krauthammer, Keith Olbermann, or some retired Army major knows about the Korean peninsula that someone like Lankov couldn’t provide a better analysis of?  The fact is that the news isn’t looking for expert analysis they are just looking for some talking head to put on the TV to fill air time.

So I would be happy if many of the so called Korea “experts” out there would just read all the English language material out there, much less even bothering to learn the Korean language.