Toward a Geopolitics of Korean Tourism

초록

The geopolitics of tourism is an emerging area of study within geography. Over the past few years, geographers’ and other scholars’ interest in the topic has rapidly increased. Yet connections between various empirical studies remain weakly identified. The fundamental questions that animate the study of the geopolitics of tourism have also only been thinly defined so far. The Korean role in the geography of tourism deserves further consideration, as well. This paper attempts to begin to fill these gaps. It aims to help construct a framework for a field of the geopolitics of Korean tourism. The article first surveys important literature within the geopolitics of tourism, identifying six key themes within existing scholarship. It then provides a brief conceptual framing that connects the study of geopolitics to the study of tourism through the concept of place. In particular, the paper argues, the geopolitics of tourism focuses on relations between the impulse to experience place and the impulse to control place. The last major section explores considerations important for (and a few possible examples of) a specifically Korean geopolitics of tourism.

키워드