2015, Vol.39, No.5

Journal of Tourism Sciences 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 2.7

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

Thanatological perspective has been widely accepted in recent tourism research on dark tourism while there are some criticisms on the perspective due to its excessive concentration on the concept of death. Therefore, this study aims to critically evaluate the validity of thanatological perspective on dark tourism by examining the tourist experience in Bongha villige in South Korea. The village is a hometown of former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun although it became well-known after he committed suicide at the same place in 2009. After his death, the village has attracted each year around one million visitors and became a popular attraction in the region. Employing a grounded theory approach, we interviewed 14 tourists at Bongha village and analyzed their experience. The results show that thanatological perspective is a valid framework, which well explain the tourist experience in the village because their motivation, behavior, and personal impacts are closely associated with the concept of death while there are some limitations of the perspective. Based on the results, this study suggests that more attention should be paid to interdisciplinary approach on dark tourism.

The purpose of this study is to examine what people think importantly regarding temple stay. To attain the goal, instead of examining it through research or survey like before, this study is going to analyze tons of information left by people centering around search keywords related with temple stay. The subjects of this research are blogs and twitters provided by NAVER and DAUM, and the data were analyzed from November 24th until December 14th, 2014. According to the results of the analysis, keywords associated with temples for temple stay, tourist spots around them, accompanying companions, and those targeted by temple stay rank mainly at the top, and people’s general recognition on temple stay is mostly positive.

This exploratory study aimed at developing a scale for measuring the corporate social responsibility of the casino corporation. The literature review covered the concept of casino corporation, corporate social responsibility and previous researches related to the development of corporate social responsibility scale. Following this, the five-phases procedure for developing a CSR scale for this study was constructed based on the studies of Churchill(1979) and DeVellis(2003). At the first phase, the initial measuring items were proposed, and at the second phase the measuring items were refined to 25 items in five categories through the Focus Group Interview and the pretest. At the third phase, the main survey was conducted, and at the fourth phase the validity and reliability tests were conducted on the refined items. Following these phases, at the fifth phase, the study finally proposed a CSR scale for the casino corporation which contains 20 items in five categories- economic, legal, ethical, philanthropic responsibility and community contribution responsibility. The contributions of this study are anticipated in two aspects: theoretically, an objective scale for measuring the CSR of the casino corporation is suggested, and practically, this scale will be a guide line for the casino corporation to establish the desirable relations with the society.