2010, Vol.34, No.9

Journal of Tourism Sciences 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 2.7

pISSN : 1226-0533 / eISSN : 2713-6388
https://journal.kci.go.kr/JTS

Tourists’ interest in death, disaster and atrocity places, so called dark tourism, is a growing phenomenon in contemporary risk society. This study was to explore socio-cultural background of the dark tourism in contemporary risk society and classify the types of dark tourism. Review of related literature showed that the term of ‘dark tourism’ was first coined by Foley & Lennon (1996a) in a special issue of the international Journal of Heritage Studies and, subsequently, it became the title of a book. Literature review also suggested that dark tourism posit questions or introduce anxiety and doubt about modernity and that it was affected by mass communication media. Based on Sharpley(2005), four different types of dark tourism(i.e., pale tourism, grey tourism supply, grey tourism demand, black tourism) were also presented. Finally, future research direction on dark tourism were discussed.

Social enterprise has been regarded as an alternative model of job creation and socal service for weak class in capitalist society. In Korea, there also has been growing interests in social enterprise in many different fields. This article explored the potentials of social enterprise in the context of Korean tourism, which has rarely been investigated so far. Results showed that social enterprise in Korean tourism has not been satisfactory because of the four different reasons: historical backgrounds of Korean social enterprise, lack of awareness on the potentials of tourism as a social service, low academic interests in tourism and social enterprise, and technical difficulties of verification for tourism social enterprise. Based on these findings, different solutions including diversification of types and contents of tourism social enterprise and public market formation and systematic supports from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, were suggested.

Using the Dual Double Diamond model, this study was to compare the tourism industry competitiveness between Korea and Japan. Data was collected from the previous study of Sim Won-Sub(2007) and yearbooks/technical reports of international institutions, such as IMD, IPS, OECD, UIA, UNWTO, WEF, and WTTC. Results showed that in terms of physical factors(i.e., the domestic infrastructure and fundamental facility size), Korea’s competitiveness was lower than those of Japan. In contrast, in terms of human factor such as the abilities of tourism industry workers, professionals, and businessmen, Korea’s competitiveness turned out to be higher than those of Japan. Results of this study suggest that in order to strengthen the competitiveness of tourism, Korea should focus on physical factor of tourism by expanding government expenditure and investment of tourism industry, strengthening fundamental facility, and increasing domestic tourism demand.