I have been known to plan vacations based on where there’s been an economic crisis, because then it will be cheap. It’s not ghoulishness so much as knowing that I’m getting a bargain and the people who live in the destination will be happy to have the business. In The Disaster Tourist, Yun Ko-Eun creates a different take on this tactic. Her main character, Yona, works for a travel agency called Jungle that takes people to places that have suffered from horrible disasters: tsunamis, wars, droughts, and the like. The 152 available tours are designed to appeal to the small number of Koreans who like adventure, prepare for the worst, and want to see the world.
It’s a clever conceit, and a commentary on a risk-averse culture. (Maybe because South Korea was created after a brutal civil war?) While Yona is developing and marketing trips, she is also dealing with a lot of drama at work, courtesy of a male colleague who envies her success. To get her out of the office, she is sent to pose at a customer on the company’s least-profitable trip, to a fictional island off the coast of Vietnam with a sinkhole.
She is disappointed. And then the fun begins. The islanders want tourists and they will do whatever they need to in order to attract them. In a way, this book reminded me of the very old but very good 1983 movie Local Hero, in which an oil company staffer comes to rural Scotland to establish a drilling operation.
South Korea is going through political upheaval right now. What government isn’t? Its situation is complicated because of its geopolitically tense location. But politics aside, this is a fun book, especially for people who like to travel and who fancy themselves as getting off the beaten track.
