SEOUL – With a professional relationship stretching back more than three decades and with three books to his credit, it’s tempting to call Michael Breen an “expert” on all things Korea.

It is a label, however, that he modestly rejects – especially when it comes to the North.

“There are military experts, there are people who studied certain aspects of it, but no one’s really an expert in North Korea – we’re all sort of ‘guessers,’” Breen told NK News in Seoul, in the first of a two-part interview.

But the former Washington Times and Guardian correspondent has been here long