Veteran South Korean journalist Wang Son-taek has been covering North Korea with YTN for over two decades and has, unlike most of his peers in the media, studied the country closely enough to earn a Ph.D. from Seoul’s University of North Korea Studies.

But following his Ph.D., which focused on foreign policy trends between the North and U.S. between 1992 and 2012, Wang became frustrated by the prevalence of “collapse theories” circulating about the North.

In a 2015 paper outlining his thoughts on the matter, Wang challenged the notionthat North Korea was prone to collapse due to the inexperience