Dark tourism - it certainly causes mixed opinions in my social circles.

The Dark Tourist is centered around an employee of Jungle - a travel agency which capitalises on disasters by promoting tourism to the affected areas.

A great concept, but I felt as though the translation let the story down a little - felt like a lot of tone was missing when reading this.

3 stars ⭐⭐⭐

Special thanks to Netgalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book is billed as a thriller and it does have some elements of a thriller. novel, but it’s also dystopian and has an ecological-political edge. I’ve probably made it sound very dull by saying that,, but it isn’t at all. It was a slow starter but once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down.

Yona works for a company that profits from disaster, setting up holidays for tourists to visit areas where disasters have taken place. She hasn’t come up with any profitable ideas for a while, so she is sent on a business trip to Mui, a small island where the mysterious Paul is planning a new way to profit from disaster. When Yona is separated from the rest of her party, her stay on Mui is extended..:and her role takes on a new dimension.

The book challenges the reader to think about the human factor to both disasters and tourism and the way it can cause exploitation of local ecology and society. Those elements are an undertone to an interesting and engaging novel. I enjoyed the book very much and will be thinking over its characters and message for a while to come.

An intriguing premise.

I wanted to like this but the prose was so flat that nothing registered. It was a great concept and I was interested at first but the lack of deviation in tone had me struggling.

Lots of big ideas at play but for me none that were fully realised.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun and translated from Korean by Lizzie Buehler is a very unexpected destination read. Yona works for a travel company called Jungle, which specialises in tour packages to the sites of natural disasters. This is a real thing for natural and man-made disasters! Up to 60K tourists visit Chernobyl each year along with countless to Pompeii, Mt St Helens, Hiroshima and even Hurricane Katrina tours. Jungle's goal for these kinds of trips is for the travelers to feel "shock > sympathy and compassion, and maybe discomfort > gratefulness for their own lives > a sense of responsibility and the feeling that they’d learned a lesson, and maybe an inkling of superiority for having survived."

After Yona reports her boss to HR for sexually assaulting her and trying to resign, the company asks her to go on one more trip for them. They want her to reassess a trip that is not doing well with customers. She is sent to a small desert island off the coast of Vietnam which was the site of a sinkhole and civil uprising. This is where things get really strange fast and things are not at all what they seem. Most of all the sinister Orwellian company Paul, who seems to have it's hands in everything.

While being a bizarrely fun read full of satire and wit, it brought up some really important topics including sexual assault/harassment in the workplace, late stage capitalism, voyeurism vs. tourism, and climate change/pollution. Really glad I read this one for #womenintranslation month.

This book is a satirical exploration of natural disasters through the lenses of tourism and consumerism. The book also looks at Nature in terms of its untamable power and its unpredictability. The book uses dark humour to comment on how people react to natural disasters. A lot of focus is put on tourist agencies that capitalize on such disasters to sell niche travel packages. It also looks at the entertainment value of such disasters, by commenting on the popularity of media content filled with images of natural disasters and human tragedies. In line with this, the book also seeks to explore the reason behind people’s fascination with these disasters. Is it due to human empathy or does it have more to do with morbid fascination? As such, the book also looks at the voyeuristic nature of the tourism that grows from disaster sites.

With regards to the prose, the book has a clear and precise writing style that makes the story almost compulsively readable. In addition to this, the book has a well-paced plot, filled with both social commentary and dark humor, which makes for a very enjoyable reading experience.

It is rare for the last chapter(s) of a book to change my mind positively. I have had moments where I get keyed up for a finale that never comes or is a poor shadow of what it could have been. This was a different kind of switch. I was halfway in and not very invested in the book, switching to it between my reading of other books. Then I saw a review (timely, I might add) by another blogger which piqued my interest.
I was wondering how someone’s experience could vary that much from what I experienced thus far and only when I came to the very end did I understand. We have a Korean woman who has worked hard to reach her position in a travel company and is on the verge of adverse change. She is an ever- woman in the workforce who is trying to stay ahead of the curve and her current skillset involves tailoring tours to disaster zones which provide maximum impact. The thought behind why this might be a viable form of entertainment is also addressed as background conversation.
I am still not a fan of this style of narration (something I have recently noticed in a few translations), but it did its part in lulling me into expecting a specific order of events unfolding when one accidental urgency causes Yona (our leading lady) to use her own wits to survive. The way things spiral from that point make the book worth reading. It is hard to imagine how the theme or tone of a narrative can switch from one angle to an entirely different one within such a short span of pages, but that is precisely what happened here. It is still not something I would read again, but I genuinely think it will add a lot of interesting commentary of debated as part of a book club.

⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience

Shortly after the Netflix series, Chernobyl, aired and became an instant hit, influencers started visiting the site of the nuclear accident. Surreal photos of a desolate landscape suddenly appeared on Instagram and other social media. While some claimed an upsurge in opportunistic selfie posting in a disaster area, it was quickly debunked as untrue. Even though the images were trending, only a few people actually visited the location. Whether these posts were insensitive, created awareness of the true events of 1986 or were just hype, they did highlight the phenomenon of disaster tourism.

Even though it might seem new to many of us, disaster tourism has been around for longer than we realise. The most well-known example being Pompeii where Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. Even today the most popular disaster sites are the areas surrounding volcanic eruptions.

The main character in The Disaster Tourist, Yona, has been working as a programming coordinator for Jungle, a company specialising in package holidays to disaster areas, for ten years. Jungle has 152 travel packages including trips to areas where there are typhoons, war, droughts, tsunamis and earthquakes – something for everyone and anyone who needs an escape from their mundane lives. And Yona’s job is to find new and exciting opportunities and create unique travel packages for adrenaline junkies. Through the years her job has made her realise that disaster lurks around every corner resulting in a preoccupation with misfortune.

Full review: https://wanderingwestswords.wordpress.com/2020/07/17/the-disaster-tourist-yun-ko-eun/

Yun Ko-eun’s The Disaster Tourist, translated from the Korean by Lizzie Buehler, follows a young woman called Yona who feels she is being gradually forced out of the company she works for, Jungle Tourism, after experiencing sexual harassment. Jungle specialise in ‘disaster tourism’, luring Korean tourists to the sites of high-profile disasters, and Yona is dispatched to assess an experience called ‘Desert Sinkhole’ in the fictional country of Mui, which Yun reportedly based on south-east Asian countries such as Vietnam and Thailand. Yona discovers that this once-popular destination is becoming less appealing because it’s perceived by its visitors as lacking authenticity; the volcano doesn’t look like what they think a volcano should look like, and the sinkhole isn’t providing the emotional experience they crave. After being accidentally left behind in Mui when her tour group depart, Yona becomes drawn into an attempt to fundamentally rebrand this tourist destination through manufacturing a new disaster, directed by a faceless corporation called Paul. It goes without saying that this novella is intended to critique the destructive tourism of wealthy outsiders, but it didn’t hit as hard as I thought it might. I wasn’t convinced by the inclusion of workplace harassment at the beginning; it seemed like one theme too many for such a short book to carry and didn’t fundamentally shape Yona’s portrayal, so I would have preferred the focus to remain with the exploitation of Mui. Even so, the intensely surreal tone meant that I felt too distanced from what was happening; it seemed so unreal that it was hard to connect with the moral questions the book raises. I wondered if, as an English reader who hasn’t read that much Korean fiction, I was missing something, and sought out this fascinating interview with the author and translator [http://bookanista.com/yun-ko-eun/]; however, Yun’s suggestion that she wanted this novel to feel like an ‘Orwellian dystopia’ confirmed that for whatever reason, The Disaster Tourist didn’t work for me.

The Disaster Tourist is award-winning South Korean writer Yun Ko-Eun’s first novel to be translated into English and one of the most original and inventive thrillers I have had the pleasure to pick up. I am pleased to report that I got what I bargained for and a whole lot more to boot.

Thirtysomething Yona Ko has spent the last decade of her life devoted to Jungle, her employer and a company which primarily offers package holiday tours to areas of the world ravaged by disasters, from hurricanes to nuclear meltdowns; it's very much their USP, so to speak, and in a world where anything seemingly goes they are providing something that is clearly in demand by would-be travellers and customers. When Yona is sexually assaulted at work by her boss her role in the workplace is downgraded and she almost resigns, there are then, but then she's surprisingly offered a new opportunity in the business whereby she would travel to the Vietnamese island of Mui to ascertain the likelihood of a natural disaster happening to determine whether it should be kept on the companies books. Aware their tourist revenue is in peril, those with power on the island plan to ”engineer” a sinkhole during a busy festival and have estimated it will kill 100 people; their plan for after the incident is just as brazen: using international aid to redevelop affected areas. Naturally, Yona is disgusted and all hell breaks loose.

This is an endlessly intriguing and deeply perceptive novel that is absolute genius and the potent mix of different elements that really shouldn't gel together but actually do are thanks to the author's immense talent and the structure of the book. It may be under 200 pages in length but this is wicked surrealist satire and a powerful and compulsive eco-thriller with a fierce feminist sensibility and is one of the most unique reads of the past five years for me. The narrative is fuelled with both humour and mounting dread and speaks volumes about the human and environmental costs of unsustainable tourism as well as the drawbacks of the capitalist system where nothing is off-limits provided it brings in the money. It is a sophisticated literary thriller that effectively and almost effortlessly blurs the lines between the personal and the political and at once feels both narrow and intriguingly wide in scope enabling it to provide compelling commentary on the protagonist's situation and that of her wider environment. A superb, off the wall, read. Many thanks to Serpent’s Tail for an ARC.

I thought this was going to be delightful, summer-y read, because, you know, we don't get to travel much these days with the global pandemic and all. HOW WRONG I WAS. After a bit of a slow build, the book became eerie and disturbing FAST.

Yun Ko-Eun's 'The Disaster Tourist' is a fascinating little book. After being sexually harassment by her boss, the titular character, Yona Ko is sent to Mui, one of the locations covered by her company's travel packages. We soon learn that her company specialises in DISASTER TOURISM. Which is exactly what is sounds like. Tourism to places where a disaster has happened - an unsavoury aspect of capitalism that monetises tragedy for the curious, macabre few. Mui is one such place - where a sinkhole cost the lives of several inhabitants. So in order to retain her job, Yona has to ensure that the portfolio for Mui is marketable and up-to-date; enticing enough for future so-called 'disaster tourists'. But the longer Yona stays, she realises that there is something insidious in Mui, and it may be too late for her.

A quick read, and one that I enjoyed immensely. Symbolic of the mood of eeriness that I have found East-Asian authors to perfectly create, 'The Disaster Tourist' is an *ahem* interesting foray into Korean literature.

Thank you to Serpent Tail UK and Net Galley for the #gifted copy of this eARC in return for an honest review.

A great read with a fascinating premise and really well written. There were times I wish the pace picked up a little but none the less, it was still super enjoyable.

I went into this reading blind - I avoided reading any reviews or summaries or anything beyond the short blurb given by NetGalley (thank you to NG for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review). This is the second time I read translated Asian fiction and I am a big fan - this fiction is becoming increasingly popular (about time) and when the translation is done well (as it was in this instant) the stories flow well. Congratulations to Lizzie Buehler on the translation and Yun Ko-Eun for a well written story.

The short book (200 pages) should come with a trigger warning on sexual assault - the reason why Yona finds herself on one of the Disaster Tourism trips is because a manager at her job sexually assaulted her and when she tried to speak out, she was sent on a work trip to 'rest'. This dystopian story at first seems odd but it touches so expertly on so many prescient global issues - the #MeToo Movement, dark tourism, the dehumanising of life to justify murder, the use of complicated bureaucracy to absolve of responsibility, the excuse of ignorance and the reluctance of people not directly affected by a situation to do what is right.

I did not see this review going this way and I try to not give much away because this story needs to be read to conclude one's own thoughts on the message.
I had set a New Years resolution to read more by Black and POC writers especially from outside of the UK & US and so far I have not been disappointed.

Marketed as an eco-thriller and it has certainly some brilliant moments but I just could not warm to it. Very much a book of two halves, the first seemingly nothing happens and the second half all sorts happens but it just never quite came together for me.
1w

A timely novel with an intriguing and original concept. Yona Ko works for a large travel company specialising in disaster tourism. She has been at Jungle for a decade and is dedicated to her work but after her boss’s inappropriate behaviour, she threatens to resign. The boss offers her a trip to evaluate one of the failing disaster sites instead, a sinkhole on an island off the coast of Vietnam. The sinkhole is unimpressive, so is the dormant volcano nearby, disaster tourists nowadays are more into tsunamis and earthquakes, this location is no longer popular or profitable. On her way back, she has a mishap and has to return to the island. Without the tourists, a different picture of the island emerges and Yona becomes involved in a plan to resurrect it as a premier disaster tourism location.

The Disaster Tourist packs a lot in for a short novel. Ko-Eun’s writing style is sparse, matter of fact. Both the protagonist and the reader feel a sense of alienation, at workplace, in the city, from life. In that sense, disaster tourism offers a reassessment: “On a disaster trip, traveller’s reactions to their surroundings usually went through the following stages: shock, a sympathy and compassion, and maybe discomfort, a gratefulness for their own lives, a sense of responsibility and the feeling that they’d learned a lesson, and maybe and inkling of superiority for having survived.”

Ko-Eun also addresses the effects of disaster tourism and corporations on local population, issues of climate change and environmentalism. Additionally, Yona suffers workplace harassment and although she is not the only one, there isn’t much she can do about it. As the novel progresses and becomes more surreal, Yona becomes more of an ambivalent character and her moral compass questionable.

The Disaster Tourist is a good, engaging read if a bit uneven. The ending felt a little rushed, leaving unresolved questions. Still, it’s an accomplished, thought provoking novel.

Three and a half stars.

My thanks to Serpent’s Tail, Profile Books and Netgalley for the opportunity to read The Disaster Tourist.

A bizarre story that becomes increasingly surreal even as it asks critical questions about how tourism intersects with capitalism, raising questions of exploitation and travel ethics. It doesn't feel coincidental that the main character is also sexually harassed by her vile boss, another form of abuse and exploitation. The brevity of the book keeps things short and sharp but the downside is a feeling of rushing to the end. I found the writing flat, very 'told'. Weird and a bit wacky!

This was not exactly what i was expecting but I liked what it did. I thought the story would plan out a bit differently but I liked how it turned out even if it was still a bit off and vague in places. There was a sense of detachment in this and I'm not sure if this is because it is a translation or if it is the story itself. I thought Yona was an interesting character and she was engaging to follow. There were a couple of places that needed restructuring as I was not exactly clear what was happening but i had a general idea of what was happening. This story was intriguing and had some lovely layered moments in this that had some deeper points of discussion happening.

'Jungle divided disasters into thirty-three distinct categories, including volcano eruptions, earthquakes, war, drought, typhoons and tsunamis, with 152 available packages.'

Yona Ko has a well-respected position in Jungle, a tour operator in Korea which organises disaster tours for those ghoulish enough to want to visit places of human tragedy. The victim of predatory sexual behaviour by her boss, she is then faced with the brick wall of silence that means female employees don't speak up for fear of losing their jobs. She is 'repositioned' anyway, and is offered a trip to one of Jungle's poorly performing locations to see whether it is worth continuing with it. So, in a small group of six and going undercover, she is transported off to Mui, an island off the coast of Vietnam where a large sinkhole appeared some time ago, and which is also home home to a rather sad dormant volcano.

Yona finds herself in a bizarre world, a five-star resort where visitors are closely monitored and only allowed to see what the resort wants them to see. Finding the trip a disappointment, Yona has a catastrophic journey back home, finding herself cut off from the group without her baggage and passport, and forced to return to Mui. Once back on the island, her world gets ever more strange, as she finds herself caught up in a plan to generate a false disaster to try to bring back the tourists. A writer is hired to create a script, a date is planned, and the island residents are assigned roles in the upcoming drama. Behind it all is the mysterious Paul, a company that seems to exert all sorts of financial control over the island and directs the resort management. As real life and fiction start to blend, nature has one final twist...

The book seems to start with two aims: a satire on the travel industry and a clarion call for the #MeToo movement. As the action moves to the island, it then turns into a Catch-22-type satire of all manner of things, where Yona finds herself equally manipulated as she was in her Korean office. She is unable to leave the island, even though she tries to cancel her stay: 'According to the rules, it's only possible for you to quit in the middle of a business trip if you die.'

There is some wonderfully dark comedy here, and equally some serious comments on a wide range of topics. The eco message is clear, as is our modern-day fascination with human tragedy and an insatiable appetite for 24-hour news cycles filled with images of natural, and man-made, disasters. It's a book to make you shake your head at the madness of humanity, and to appreciate the power of Nature. A brave, bold book that really packs a punch. Great stuff. 4.5 rounded up to 5 stars.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

This is a dark novel dealing with Yona Ko, a 33-year-old employee at Jungle (a tourism company focusing particularly on travel to areas affected by natural disasters). After things go sour for her in the workplace, she is sent on a business trip to a destination that is on the list of trips potentially being scrapped by the company. There she uncovers something rather sinister...

I read this book quite quickly but at times found it a little hard to get into. It is an interesting read that takes a biting look at the ethics of the travel industry, but ultimately I felt that the second half was a little rushed, and at times found it confusing.

*I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

The blurb made me feel like I was gonna read some over the top political statement book with a naggy female character. The first sentence has all the terms and even the MeToo hashtag in order to appeal to potential readers in the same way the travel agency Jungle tries to sell their disaster travel packages. It made me cringe and hesitate for a bit before I decided to pick it up and I was glad I did!

The Disaster Tourist is about Yona, a salary worker at a tourist agency that sells itineraries to disaster zones. She has a hard time at work, having to deal with sexual harassment from a higher-up so it seems like a blessing in disguise when she is sent on a vacation to evaluate one of the low-performing itineraries. After so many years Yona finally remembers that she works for a travel agency because she loves traveling, except she hardly ever does.

She travels to the island Mui in Vietnam and visits all the tourist traps including the desert sinkhole that is Mui’s disaster site. Her fellow travelers are on this trip for a learning experience. For them it is not about the beauty of the place but more about the ‘I’ve been there’ vibe that travel can bring: “Even though I came close to a disaster, I escaped unscathed: those were the selfish words of solace you told yourself after returning home.” When tourists flood a tourist destination they disrupt the lives of the locals, yet how does a tourist site return to ‘normal’ after it has been turned into one big theme park?

When Yona returns to the island for a second time she gets to experience the non-touristy side of Mui and that is when the real Mui shows itself. Just like Yona no longer turns a blind eye to what’s happening, I, as a reader, start to reflect on my travel experiences as well. I think the type of questions I ask myself will be different from what you will ask yourself, but in essence they come down to the following: are you responsible for what you cause indirectly and more travel-specific: are we destroying the popular tourist spots (the world) beyond repair for those living there? Which is worse, the disaster or the traveler?

“‘It’s too scary to visit disaster destinations close to home,’ Yona explained. ‘Don’t we need to be distanced somewhat from our ordinary lives – from the blankets we sleep under, and the bowls we eat from every day – in order to see the situation more objectively?'” If you turn a blind eye to what’s happening in your everyday life or at your workplace, then you might do the same elsewhere. At first, I thought the ending of the book was unsatisfactory because of some unsolved business that I can’t say more about as to not spoil anything, but gradually, as the actual ending unfolded itself, I came to appreciate it. Maybe Yona’s inability to take hold of her situation fits her character.

Yun Ko-eun crafted the story very skillfully. Her writing style is pleasant and her imagination keeps you entertained. The length of the novel is just right. You can read it as it is and take The Disaster Tourist as a light and fun novel, enjoying the exaggerations and turn of events while secretly wanting to travel to the described destinations. That’s one way to read this book. The other way is to reflect on the themes brought up in relation to your own travels and lifestyle. Do you bring joy or disaster to the places you visit? I felt somewhat chastised and after finishing this book I still don’t know if this was the author’s intention or not. It is also quite possible that she is mocking me for taking it seriously.

The Disaster Tourist by the Korean author Yun Ko-eun is a novel that feels light but is actually quite sophisticated. Yun delivers a perfect blend between reality and imagination and questions our view on issues in society using a topic we all love. Recommended!

2.5 rounded down

Well, this was a wild ride.

Yona is 33 and works as a trip coordinator at a travel company which runs disaster themed trips - to places blighted by floods, volcanic eruptions and the like - for Korean tourists. When Yona is sexually assaulted by her boss and consequently at risk of losing her job her boss sends her on a trip to the fictional nation of Mui. The company are considering stopping running some of the less successful trips, and Yona is sent to assess whether they should keep this trip going.

Once in Mui - a country off the coast of Vietnam and famous for a sinkhole disaster in the 1960s - things progress as expected... until Yona gets cut off from the rest of her tour group and misses her flight home. Things then take a turn and the novel gets a lot darker and more bizarre.

As a commentary on tourism this raised some interesting issues and was very readable, but I think it lost its way in the second half - which, conversely, is where the pace picked up. I think many readers will enjoy this for it satirical take on attitudes to travel, but I wasn't able to quite get what the author was trying to say with the events in the second half of the novel and my interest unfortunately waned as it reached its unusual conclusion.