I sat uncomfortably on a small stool in front of a green screen that would end up depicting a still image of central Seoul. A small microphone poking out of my shirt enabled me to speak to a news anchor in Beijing about the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, specifically about the inter-Korean geopolitics at play. As I talked about the implications of a joint North-South women’s hockey team or the 1988 Seoul Olympics or being cautiously optimistic or something, a banner appeared on the screen with the words “political analyst” written across it. Fair enough: even if the nomenclature was a bit hoity-toity for what I actually am, I was, in fact, analyzing a political situation. As I continued to speak, the screen jumped to a picture of athletes from North and South Korea holding hands as they walked together for the opening ceremonies. When the screen came back to me, the title beneath my name had changed. I was officially, for those few fleeting minutes, an “expert.”
That’s when I knew there was a crisis of expertise…
