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The Disaster Tourist

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An eco-thriller with a fierce feminist sensibility, The Disaster Tourist engages with the global dialog around climate activism, dark tourism, and the #MeToo movement.

For ten years, Yona has been stuck behind a desk as a coordinator for Jungle, a travel company specializing in vacation packages to destinations devastated by disaster and climate change. Her work life is uneventful until trouble arises in the form of a predatory colleague.

To forestall any disruption of business-as-usual, Jungle makes Yona a proposition: a paid "vacation" to the desert island of Mui. But Yona must pose as a tourist and assess whether Jungle should continue their partnership with the unprofitable destination.

Yona travels to the remote island, whose major attraction is an underwhelming sinkhole, a huge disappointment to the customers who've paid a premium. Soon Yona discovers the resort's plan to fabricate a catastrophe in the interest of regaining their good standing with Jungle--and the manager enlists Yona's help. Yona must choose between the callous company to whom she's dedicated her life, or the possibility of a fresh start in a powerful new position. As she begins to understand the cost of the manufactured disaster, Yona realizes that the lives of Mui's citizens are in danger--and so is she.

In The Disaster Tourist, Korean author Yun Ko-eun grapples with the consequences of our fascination with disaster, and questions an individual's culpability in the harm done by their industry.

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2013

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About the author

Yun Ko-eun

9 books69 followers
Yun Ko Eun is her pen name and her real name is Ko Eun-ju. She was born in 1980 in Seoul, South Korea. She studied creative writing at Dongguk University. She made her literary debut in 2004 when she won the 2nd Daesan Collegiate Literary Prize. In 2008, she won the 13th Hankyoreh Literary Award for her novel Mujungryeok jeunghugun (무중력증후군 The Zero G Syndrome). She has published three short story collections: Irinyong siktak (1인용 식탁 Table for One), Aloha (알로하 Aloha), and Neulgeun chawa hichihaikeo (늙은 차와 히치하이커 The Old Car and Hitchhiker)—and the novel Bamui yeohaengjadeul (밤의 여행자들 Travelers of the Night).

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,147 reviews
Profile Image for Cindy.
523 reviews128k followers
August 31, 2020
Interesting concept that critiques the tourism industry and human damage to the environment, though I wish we got a deeper exploration.
Profile Image for JimZ.
1,209 reviews673 followers
December 17, 2020
Wow, I have to give Yun Ko-Eun at A+ for cleverness. Maybe somebody has thought this up, but I don’t think so: a tourist agency that centers itself on disasters. Mostly natural disasters like volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsuanamis. And you go there afterwards and survey the damage, talk to the locals, and even do volunteer work, helping out the locals!

Her writing, especially in the beginning, grabbed me too. I came upon these sentences and they conjured up what I think she had intended the mind to conjure up, and I just remember as I was reading it saying “wow, that’s clever” but not in an interfering way that would distract me from the story (‘Yona” is the main protagonist in the novel):
• Recently, whenever Yona went into work, she’d felt like a dandelion seed that had somehow drifted into a building.
• These facts were as quotidian to Yona as the changing colours of a traffic light.

And then Yona goes to a restaurant in which you have to take off your shoes, and the restaurant loses her shoes. And get this—when she bought the shoes, they had a sale…" the shoes she had lost were actually part of a pair and a half. The store she’d bought them from offered a second right shoe for free with the purchase of each pair. If only the first two of her three shoes hadn’t been stolen at the restaurant, the remaining survivor wouldn’t have taunted her from the hallway of her apartment when she got home."
I mean…how clever is that??? 😊

Yona, a young Korean woman, works for a South Korean tourist agency, Jungle, that specializes in tours of post-disaster areas. One tour is not selling well, and the company tells her to play the role of a tourist and see if she can troubleshoot what the problem is. The disaster is a sinkhole that swallowed up a bunch of people in the middle of the day. She goes to a hotel as part of a disaster tour in an island off of Vietnam named Mui. Part of the problem was that since the disaster, rain had fallen and the hole was not a lake and that’s what it looks like—a lake. Who gives a damn about looking at a lake? But she soon discovers not all is what it seems. For example, a local man is crippled as a result of the sinkhole and relates his remembrance of the day of the sinkhole disaster to the tourists. Later on, Yona circles back to the area and sees the man walking normally….no limp. 🤨 So there is something off there. There’s a whole lot of things that are off but to relate them to you would be giving away parts of the storyline and I wouldn’t’ want to do that…
🤫

Here is a nice assessment of the novel by three writers that I think captures the overall essence of the novel:
• An endless surprising and totally gripping read, ‘The Disaster Tourist’ is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking. It questions every aspect of life we so often take for granted, smashing apart any easy distinctions between natural and artificial, normal and abnormal, peaceful and violent, personal and political. There could not be a more prescient moment for this too-real fiction about how we create our own disasters on every scale and what resilience might mean in the face of catastrophe. — Elvia Wilk, author of ‘Oval’
• A gripping literary thriller about disaster, adventure, and a crisis of conscience that will resonate with any traveler. — Jennifer Croft, author of ‘Homesick’ and winner of the Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s ‘Flights’ Jim: Holy bologna. I just read a bio of Ms. Croft…now I have to get the novel she wrote and then I have to get ‘Flights’…what an amazing person — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennife...
• A labyrinth of catastrophes and cataclysms, ‘The Disaster Tourist’ is a precisely penned novel that lays bare the human condition. Mysterious, evocative, and rich. — Sarah Rose Etter, author of ‘The Book of N’
This was a real treat to read, and I hope I have convinced you to put this on your TBR list!!! 😊 😊

Notes:
• Translated by Lizzie Buehler, MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa and currently a PhD student in comparative literature at Harvard University — her writing and short translations appear in Asymptote, azalea Magazine, Litro, The Massachusetts Review, and Translation Review. In addition to The Disaster Tourist, she has translated Yun Ko-eun’s story collection Table for One (Columbia University Press, April 2021). (Jim: I did not know this…goodie…another work I can read by this wonderful author!)
• About the author: this is her first novel translated into English. It was written in 2013 and has become available in English this year. She has several novels and short story collections published In South Korea. She is a recipient of the Hankyoreh Literary Award, the Lee Hyo-Seok Literary Award, and the Kim Yong-ik Literary award. She lives in Seoul.

Reviews (yea, she has some impressive entities raving about this book!!!):
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202... Following a spate of recent fiction considering the strange intersection of our work and leisure lives – novels such as Ling Ma’s apocalyptic satire Severance and Sayaka Murata’s oddly affecting Convenience Store Woman – The Disaster Tourist offers up another fresh and sharp story about life under late capitalism.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/a...
https://www.ecolitbooks.com/2020/08/b...
Profile Image for Bionic Jean.
1,360 reviews1,441 followers
December 24, 2024
“Disaster Tourism”. What do these two words mean to you? Perhaps you have not put them together in your mind before.

But disaster tourism is not a new phenomenon. People have always been interested in gazing at post-disaster spaces, for a variety of motives, and the act of deliberately setting out to visit them is growing in popularity. Nowadays the tourism industry has packages in place for people to visit locations that have been subjected to either man-made or natural environmental disasters. It is considered a sub-sector of dark tourism, defined as: “the representation of inhuman acts, and how these are interpreted for visitors”. Examples might be visiting Auschwitz, the German Nazi concentration camp in Poland, or Phnom Penh, Cambodia to view the skulls found after the Khmer Rouge regime. Disaster tourism has a slightly different emphasis. It includes visiting Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which was the scene of an explosion in 1986—or Kathmandu after the 2015 earthquake—or New Orleans after hurricane Katrina in 2005. Unlike dark tourism, these disasters are not necessarily characterised by distress and atrocity, or sadness and pain. Perhaps you have been on such a tour, or even considered working in the industry.

So this is the underlying theme of The Disaster Tourist a 2013 novel by the South Korean writer Yun Ko-eun. It begins in South Korea, but a lot of the action takes place in Vietnam on the island of Mui (possibly based on the real life Mũi Né).

We focus on Yona Ko, who is a programme manager for Jungle: a Seoul company which specialises in curating holiday packages in disaster zones. She has worked there for 10 years and knows exactly why people choose to visit areas ravaged by tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. They will experience three progressive stages. First of all is shock, followed by sympathy and compassion, and maybe discomfort and gratitude for their own lives. Finally comes a sense of responsibility and the feeling that they had learned a lesson, (and maybe an inkling of superiority for having survived). That was the received theory, and what the company used to turn into a profitable concern, by “surveying disaster zones and moulding them into travel destinations”. Jungle prided itself on offering “thirty-three distinct categories [of crisis], including volcano eruptions, earthquakes, war, drought, typhoons, and tsunamis, with 152 available packages.”

We may consider this to be a supremely cynical ethos, but Yona is good at her job, and diligent. She is “skilled at quantifying the unquantifiable”, looking at the frequency and strength of disasters, and the resulting damage to humans and property. She transforms this data into colourful graphs on her desk, irrespective of the human pain and loss represented, and any human consequences which give rise to inhuman algorithms. Yona takes great pride in her work, voyeuristic and exploitative though it may be. Yona never considers that aspect, and at 33 years old is solely focused on success in her career, putting all personal and ethical considerations aside.

Pausing a little, this is an interesting modern phenomenon, but varies from country to country, and what is about to happen in this first chapter blows the differences between cultures wide open. There has been a spate of recent fiction considering the strange intersection of our work and leisure lives. The Japanese writer Sayaka Murata gave us “Convenience Store Woman”, and here we have a comparable novel by a Korean writer, Yun Ko-eun. Both are satires, fresh and sharp stories about life under late capitalism.

For a long time English people (of whom I am one) have been wary of American companies, who (it is said), want your heart and soul when you sign up with them. There is a sense that your life is not your own, and your free time is always given at the company’s discretion, rather than as a contractual right. This more extreme form of capitalism is creeping into Britain too. But Japan seems to have pushed capitalism even further, as the only country with “collective capitalism”, which relies on cooperation, but ignores the fact that the means of production are private. This does provide benefits for workers, but it also places a high demand on them and their families. Long hours and high levels of discipline are commonplace, resulting in high levels of stress and even death by overwork: “karōshi”.

So what of South Korea? Unless you live there, is is hard to appreciate the mindset, and in this first part of the book Yona seems almost like an automaton, having no emotional component. Perhaps this is a natural human defence mechanism; to not engage your feelings and thereby protect yourself. Not only is Yona subservient to the company, but she is also submissive to the males socially.

.

This is a turning point for how we view Yona. We might either have felt pity for Yona's perceived impotence, or felt irritated at her apparent acceptance of a degrading position. We have been inclined to see her as just a cipher, an Everywoman in Korean society, but the writing now cleverly emphasises her more as an individual. The novel’s power dynamics have changed; not only for Yona, but the dynamic between Yona and the reader has also been tweaked. And this is a little disturbing. Yona had been at Jungle, but now we wonder if perhaps we misinterpreted the reasons for her neutral reaction. Now Yona has power, and is not under threat, yet she still doesn’t seem to care about anything. If anything, Yona now seems consciously amoral. This adds another dimension; and it is a very chilling one.

There are four other Korean tourists: a mother and daughter, a recent college graduate, and a writer, as well as a local guide. These characters are vividly portrayed, and each has a disturbing side. The one who made my hair stand on end was the intensely obnoxious child, who appeared to be given no moral boundaries by which to make decisions. Most of the other tourists felt that she should not have been on the tour. All the visitors see everyday inequality, racism, and how poverty takes a high emotional toll. Local children hawk trinkets,

It is only a small step to a coldly logical horror scenario. As the story moves on, we see Yona’s gradual realisation of what is really going on, and how it is all too easy for her to accept this. Yona’s own complicity in the broader systems at work in Jungle’s interventions on local spaces begin to evolve with a dreadful remorselessness.

Each time we have accepted the hair-raisingly evil business practice, the emotional horror increases another notch.



In the end, Nature always wins.

The Disaster Tourist is an easy read, in terms of the vocabulary and structure. A good Goodreads friend who lives in South Korea has described what academics scathingly call “Kim Jiyoung syndrome”. This claims that there is a tendency to simplify the language and style, in order to make literature accessible to everyone. If this applies to The Disaster Tourist, then it has been masterfully done. Its accessibility belies its devastating concerns. We read a gripping novel; a conspiracy page-turner akin to those of Michael Crichton. Ethical and ecological dilemmas are there on every page. This is the stuff of nightmares, where . Every single person is to some extent culpable, but also exploited.

And yet it doesn’t quite reach 5 stars for me. The Disaster Tourist has been hyped as a book about the “me-too” movement. However the sexual harassment was not developed as a theme, but was essentially a mere plot device. Admittedly there was a big difference From being a passive, accepting character mainly because of her gender, Yona then began to feel more in control, and as a consequence we began to feel more involved with the story. But then it is largely ignored, except for a long section Even so I am not sure this is a specifically feminist issue, but more a human one! I was also unsure about the unnecessarily sentimental love story, which just seemed to be added in for no reason. Finally there were some translation issues which irked me sometimes. One example is this: “These facts were as quotidian to Yona as the changing colours of a traffic light.” Really? Quotidian? That's not a word which is in my daily vocabulary. It sounds straight out of a pretentious literary novel—or more likely, a thesaurus. Yet Lizzie Buehler apparently won an award for this translation.

Nevertheless The Disaster Tourist is a book well worth reading. The philosophical and ethical issues addressed are disturbing and complex ones. The indictment of tourism, with its industrial and often-imperial overtones, is carefully nuanced and focused to make the reader uncomfortable. We see the systems of global capital at large, and how they affect different people and places in different ways. We see how the sites of some people’s trauma become the consumables offered in trade for tourists seeking an “authentic experience”. And we also see as a necessary consequence, the side effect of moral righteousness. One tourist comments: “Isn’t this the reason we’re on this trip? […] To avoid repeating history?” and the others agree, repeatedly voicing justifications to themselves about bearing witness. Some even expiate their guilt by doing community service in the place they visit, such as digging a well (which ironically is never used). Cynically, the author tells us:

“The travellers expose themselves to the islanders’ stories of trauma and grief in order to access a second-hand emotion.”

We are forced to question the whole area of dark tourism. Yun Ko-eun show us the various motivations of the tourists, but invariably the tour is designed to fulfil the inner longings of the traveller, rather than to provide a true meeting of place and person. And we see the wanton destruction of the ecological system, and the ways that humanity’s trash on a huge scale, pollution, and capital all interrelate and increase, circling the globe.

Our protagonist Yona has choices, which are cleverly exaggerated to form this relentlessly dark, near-future speculative satire. Yet the situations are common and believable. Capitalism often asks workers to sacrifice their ethics for their jobs, as we saw at the beginning. Tourism often exacerbates and profits from economic inequality, with tourists snapping shots of “quaint” people and customs. We watch the Korean consumers’ desires for “something exotic, the spirit of adventure”. Jungle is an exaggeratedly ghoulish enterprise, but as we have seen, its offerings are not that far from tourism packages which exist in the real world. Worst of all, observing tragedy from afar, as we all do when we watch the World News, often desensitises us; deadening our emotional impulses and processing our natural human reactions to accept disaster. We have seen it all before.

Yona has a purely capitalist world view, without a moral dimension: she relates to everything to herself and sees others as commodities. By the end she learns that to Jungle, With savage irony, it is too late for her to understand that Mui’s inhabitants’ lives are worth more than that, too.

The Disaster Tourist is a biting critique of dark tourism, and our over-commodified society, as well as a satirical and suspenseful eco-thriller, getting the point across that climate change is inextricably bound up with the pressures of global capitalism.
Profile Image for Emily B.
486 reviews508 followers
August 14, 2022
Despite it’s short length I didn’t fly through it as I would usually which means I probably didn’t enjoy it as much as other books. However it’s definitely a unique and original read. It’s also pretty though provoking, in regards to tourism and the environment.
Profile Image for luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus).
1,528 reviews5,171 followers
August 27, 2021
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The Disaster Tourist doesn't tell a very memorable or engrossing story. If you've read the summary you know exactly what to expect from this book. We are introduced to Yona who is thirty-three and works as trip coordinator at Jungle, a travel company that specialises in organising disaster themed vacations. Yona is sexually harassed by her boss and seems like she would rather leave the company. She then agrees to go on a paid vacation in which she will have to determine whether Jungle should cancel this package. This vacation takes her to Mui, a fictional island not far from Vietnam. The disaster tourists that are travelling alongside Yona don't seem all the impressed or shocked by Mui's desert sinkhole. Yona then is left stranded to Mui and finds herself agreeing to take part in a morally questionable enterprise.
As a critique of disaster tourism this book doesn't really offer anything truly compelling or thought-provoking. Most readers will be aware of the voyeuristic and exploitative nature of this brand of tourism and of the motivations of those who wish to participate in it (wanting to raise awareness, witness sites of devastation in order to understand them).
The author's style does very little showing. Unlike with books like Temporary or Convenience Store Woman readers will never gain an insight into Yona's job or her mind. She remains a surface character whose actions are either obscure or unbelievable. The tone of this book was also kind of a miss for me (definitely not as darkly funny or insightful as it wanted to be).
What could have been an irreverent look at tourism ended up being a forcibly surreal tale that wasn't half as clever or inventive as it tried to be.

Profile Image for David.
745 reviews380 followers
October 25, 2020
Man this was a trip.

Yona Kim works for a Korean company called Jungle that curates inclusive holiday packages to disaster zones. She's been there for 10 years but is feeling like something has changed, that her position within the organization has subtly shifted. When she is sexually harassed several times by a fellow co-worker, who perhaps senses her diminished standing, we expect a certain type of book. But Yona isn't interested in joining her voice with the victims, with aligning with what she considers the losers. The incident becomes a launching off point to her taking an extended leave to a disaster destination called Mui.

Tribal slaughter to make the tourists shudder and a massive sinkhole - now a wide lake - to excite their imagination. The guests occupy beachfront bungalows with crisp white sheets, rose petals by the bath, a single guest consuming more water than an entire village. They are trundled out to witness the poverty of the locals with a scheduled day for altruistic labour in digging a well. But again, Yun Ko-eun has bigger plans than an indictment of Instatravel and white-knighting voluntourism.

Improbably separated from the rest of her tour and left behind, Yona sees what happens in the off season and finds herself having to justify a strange calculus of lives. (Pandemic economics anyone?) A massive, faceless corporation named Paul that despite it's humanizing name seems inevitable in its forward progress of business, widely distributed across thousands of people that are "just doing their job" harbouring no personal malice or ill will and yet inevitably streamrolling over anything and anyone that gets in their way.

And then, as if unable to support the massive weight of so much metaphor it has heaped upon us, The Disaster Tourist veers off into Kaufmanesque territory and embeds a meta lovestory amidst a fabricated disaster. It's a lot. Sacrilege to say but I think this would be even better as a TV serialization. This thing reads like a tight one season story arc filled with rich possibility and knowing winks. This thing could become even more scathing, hilarious and plaintive if given some real space to breathe.
Profile Image for Steph.
733 reviews430 followers
April 1, 2021
i really enjoyed this dark and surreal commentary on capitalism, human selfishness, justification of corruption, and the exploitation of desperate communities. the disaster tourist centers on a particularly reprehensible area of the (already problematic) tourism industry: disaster tourism, where tourists visit locales that have been devastated by natural disasters. that's fucked up, right?

there's a steadily increasing atmosphere of dread as our protagonist, yona, slowly realizes that things on the small island of mui are not quite what they seem. fouls, mannequins, crocodiles. mui's manufactured unreality eventually becomes more vivid than reality itself, and i really enjoyed seeing it all unfold.

the marketing and blurbs for this book include a lot of buzzwords; some more apt than others. i would agree that this is an "eco-thriller," and it's certainly concerned with climate activism and capitalism. but i'm a little troubled by this being marketed as feminist and part of the #metoo movement. yona is sexually assaulted by her boss before she embarks on her trip, but the novel does not explore this deeply. i interpreted it as the cementation of yona's powerless; she is at the mercy of her boss, and consequently, the corporation. there doesn't seem to be a larger commentary beyond her character's position of exploitation. and it's interesting that we're at a cultural point where slapping on the word "feminist" can help sell books.

ANYWAY. the disaster tourist is translated from korean, and sometimes i found the writing to be clunky or confusing. but i'm really glad it was translated into english, because it's a super interesting read. the author also includes a very wholesome afterword about how thrilled she was to have her work translated. i'd definitely be interested in reading more from ko-eun!
Profile Image for inciminci.
569 reviews296 followers
January 8, 2023
Here I am thinking what an absurd and surreal book idea it is to send your protagonist to catastrophe regions as a tourist… Only to find out that disaster tourism or dark tourism isn’t absurdism at all, but a real thing people do in this world. Why am I even disappointed in people’s exploiting and audacity, it is normal apparently?

What’s even more normal, and arguably morbid, is that once a region starts receiving endorsements and remedies, tourists start flowing and leaving their money, that region is going to do everything to keep those privileges, at the cost of continuous “disasters” happening.

In The Disaster Tourist Yun Ko-eun gives us the story of travel agent Yona Ko who works at such a travel agency and can’t with her job anymore. After enduring her boss’s disgusting sexual advances, she is being offered a special position – she is to visit the island Mui in Vietnam where a massacre has taken place in the past and examine whether the travel package is still necessary or not. After an interesting week, Yona gets lost on her way to the airport and not only does she discover the place is not the place she thought it was, she is also proposed a brand new and highly profitable position. Will she really do it?

There are so many social issues being broached here; sexual harassment at work, dark tourism, tourism in general, capitalism, value of human life and karma, possibly. More tragic than anything else, really. Somehow I didn't really enjoy reading it.
Profile Image for Gerhard.
1,228 reviews769 followers
December 14, 2020
Eight-one per cent of the world’s natural disasters over the past ten years had been floods and typhoons, and the disasters that caused the most casualties were earthquakes. But to Yona, those had just become work. Now, she faced a greater disaster: her feelings.

Wow, that was a short sharp shock of a novel. And many thanks to @JimZ for insisting I bump this up my ‘to read’ pile. I think this is my first experience with a Korean author, so I have no idea how indicative this is of literature in that country. Suffice it to say that Yun Ko-eun takes an idea that seems straight out of science fiction, turns it into an alarming reality, and also ends up subverting her own premise in the most satisfying way possible. (I was completely wrong-footed by the ending, which is brilliantly, er, executed.)

This is one of those books where the less you know about it, the more visceral the impact is. I am always puzzled by the ‘why’ of book-jacket descriptions, and in this instance I think it definitely gives too much away. All a potential reader needs to know is that Yona works for Jungle, a tourist agency that specialises in arranging visits to disaster hotspots.

After suffering sexual harassment at the hands of her creepy manager, whom she discovers has made it a career path to inflict his unwanted attentions on his underlings, she is quickly bundled off on a supposed ‘business trip’ to re-evaluate the underperforming disaster site on the island of Mui. What can possibly go wrong, right?

It was strange to read a book about travel and tourism in the shadow of a global pandemic that has been a death knell for this sector, which plays such a critical role in so many economies. But Ko-eun also starkly portrays the damage it inflicts on indigenous cultures, especially when it comes to unscrupulous tour operators like Jungle. Not to mention high-minded and privileged tourists, who often act like Royalty visiting the Commonwealth.

What puzzled me about the book-jacket description was the statement that this is “an eco-thriller with a fierce feminist sensibility” that ‘engages’ with the #MeToo movement. Huh? Sometimes I think book marketers try too hard to link a book to what is current. In any event, ‘The Disaster Tourist’ is eminently relatable and hauntingly congruous with what is happening in the world right now.

Kudos to the effortless translation by Lizzie Buehler. I have no idea how difficult it is to translate Korean into English, but I am sure it can’t be easy.
Profile Image for 8stitches 9lives.
2,853 reviews1,706 followers
July 4, 2020
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 and 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.
Profile Image for Laubythesea.
510 reviews1,282 followers
January 12, 2025
3,5⭐️

Quizás en 2013, cuando se publicó originalmente esta novela, la historia que esconden sus páginas fuera algo distópico, sin embargo, ahora que nos llega su traducción, es una realidad. Eso no hace que la trama pierda un ápice de interés, si me apuras la hace aún más interesante.
 
En ‘La turista’ vemos como Yona, tras diez años trabajando en la agencia de viajes Jungle, va cumpliendo una serie de características que suelen derivar en abandono forzoso de la empresa. Aquí la primera pullita.
 
Jungle es una agencia especializada en ofrecer viajes a destinos que han sufrido todo tipo de desastres (cuanto peores, mejor). Aquí el segundo melón, y habrá mucho más pero no os los voy a enumerar. Para tratar de salvar su carrera, Yona aceptará unirse a uno de los viajes para ver si sigue siendo rentable para la empresa. Su informe y opiniones prometen ser fundamentales para la decisión final. Y nada, así partirá Yona hacia la remota isla de Mui donde os podéis imaginar que habrá sorpresas. Y no especialmente buenas.
 
Una crítica feroz y muy certera hacia muchas cosas relacionadas con el mundo del turismo, desde el punto de vista de los destinos que se venden al turismo, las empresas y también, los viajeros (que no estamos exentos de culpa). Un libro de esos para pararte a reflexionar sobre lo que ves en determinados viajes, tu huella en los lugares que visitas… o qué hay detrás de lo que te cuenta un reel en Instagram o la foto inspiradora de turno en ese lugar donde estáis “solos” y donde no se ven los 40 minutos de cola, el espejo que crea una perspectiva ficticia o el sufrimiento de los locales.
 
No entro en los casos específicos de la trama de la novela porque tiene mucho de thriller, con momentos de gran tensión, giros… y creo que es guay irlos descubriendo con la lectura y sabiendo lo menos posible. Es verdad que la segunda mitad se me hizo algo más lenta, pero siento que es algo buscado, la autora sacrifica la velocidad para que su denuncia sea más profunda y no pase en ningún caso desapercibida. Honestamente, me sorprendió mucho lo turbia que llega a ponerse la cosa y lo rápido que lo paradisiaco puede volverse infernal. Con todo, tiene sus toques de humor (malvado).
 
Aviso: si te agobian los desastres naturales, no es tu novela, porque Jungle basa sus viajes en eso y se describen varios sucesos que pueden hacértelo pasar mal.
 
Una novela que en ocasiones se siente como un (odioso) espejo y que sin duda invita a la reflexión. Atrapante y asfixiante. Ojalá traduzcan más a Yun Ko-eun.
Profile Image for Paul Fulcher.
Author 2 books1,729 followers
December 31, 2023
‘Then where do I get approval?’
‘From Paul.’


Winner of the 2021 Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger

The Disaster Tourist was translated by Lizzie Buehler from the 2013 original 밤의 여행자들 (Night Travellers) by 윤고은.

The novel opens:

Northbound: High atmospheric pressure, cherry blossoms, news of deaths
Southbound: Dust clouds, strikes, debris

News of the deaths moved fast that week. Word was spreading quickly, but it wouldn’t be long before people lost interest. By the time funeral proceedings began, the public would have already forgotten the deceased. A tsunami had hit Jinhae, in the province of Kyeongnam. Jinhae was where cherry blossoms first bloomed in early spring. When it happened, on an otherwise typical afternoon, life in the city had stopped. In an instant, everything was underwater: tourists beholding the flowers, pedestrians meandering about, buildings that had been warmed by the sun, and street lamps on the edge of the beach.

북상하는 것.
고기압, 벚꽃, 누군가의 부음.
남하하는 것.
황사, 파업, 쓰레기.

지난 한 주간 가장 빠른 속도로 움직인 것은 부음 소식이었다. 발인이 지나면 효력을 잃어버릴, 유통기한이 짧기에 신속한 것. 소식이 시작된 곳은 경남 진해였다. 하필 벚꽃의 발원지와도 같은 곳. 어느 오후의 거대한 쓰나미 아래서, 그곳�� 모든 생활들이 갑자기 점. 점. 점. 으로 끊어졌다. 꽃 마중을 갔던 사람도, 걷던 사람도, 일광욕을 하던 건물도, 해변의 가로등도, 모두 점. 점. 점. 난파당했다.


It continues:

Yona went down to Jinhae on Friday evening. Jungle – the travel company where she worked as a programming coordinator – didn’t currently offer any travel packages to visit the post-tsunami rubble, but it would soon. After arriving, Yona’s first tasks were to hand over donations and dispatch volunteers. She spent the weekend giving out money – ten-thousand-won contributions from nearly a thousand Jungle employees – expressing her condolences and assessing the situation. Jungle divided disasters into thirty-three distinct categories, including volcano eruptions, earthquakes, war, drought, typhoons and tsunamis, with 152 available packages. For the city of Jinhae, Yona planned to create an itinerary that combined viewing the aftermath of the tsunami with volunteer work.

Yona (요나) has been at Jungle over 10 years, a Korean tour company specialising in tourist trips to disaster zones, her role to scout out natural disaster sites and design new packages.

But her career has stagnated. In a Kafkaesque manner, she has apparently been deemed to have committed a 'foul' and received a 'yellow card'; nothing is said or written officially, but everyone seems to know it, meaning her fellow employees start to distance themselves from her and her male boss now considers her fair game for harassment.

But when she hands in her resignation, her boss persuades her instead to take a vacation and business trip combined. She is sent, incognito, to one of Jungle's partner resorts, (the fictional) Mui, to experience the package as a tourist and report back on whether it should be dropped from their roster.

The desert sinkhole trip was a six-day package, its destination a place called Mui. Yona had to search on the internet to find where it was. Mui was an island nation about the same size as Korea’s Jeju Island. You had to cross the southern part of Vietnam to get there. First you flew to Ho Chi Minh City airport, then you rode a bus to the seaside city of Phan Thiet and finally you took a thirty-minute boat ride. Yona understood why this package wasn’t more popular. It took a day to get there and a day to get back, and the scenery upon arrival was significantly less exciting than that of other disaster packages. There was a desert sinkhole like the name suggested, and maybe it was as ‘frightening and grim’ as the promotional materials claimed, but the problem was that rain had turned the sinkhole into a lake. It didn’t really look scary any more, or like anything special at all. When people heard the word ‘sinkhole’, they at least expected something like the 2010 Guatemala City hole, a five-hundred-metre-deep tumorous pit that had demolished the city’s entire downtown. Yona was growing suspicious that Mui wouldn’t fulfil her already low expectations.

사막의 싱크홀은 5박 6일짜리 상품이었다. ‘무이’라는 곳이 목적지였는데, 그곳이 어디인지는 인터넷으로 조금 찾아봐야 했다. 무이는 크기가 제주도만 한 섬나라였다. 무이로 가려면 베트남 남부를 거쳐야 했다. 비행기를 타고 호찌민 공항으로, 버스를 타고 다시 해안 도시인 판티엣으로, 그리고 판티엣에서 배를 타고 30분 정도 달려야 다다를 수 있었다. 왜 이 상품이 인기가 없는지 알 것도 같았다. 가는 데 하루, 오는 데 하루를 들여서 볼 수 있는 풍경은 다른 재난 여행 상품들보다 미약해 보였다. 상품 이름처럼 사막에 싱크홀이 생긴 것은 사실이고, 홍보물에 쓰인 설명처럼 그것은 꽤 ‘두렵고 슬픈 풍경일 수도 있지만, 문제는 그게 지금은 호수로 변해서 딱히 무서워 보이거나 독특해 보이지 않는다는 점이었다. 사람들은 이제 ‘싱크홀’이라고 하면 적어도 2010년 과테말라 시티에 생겨난 깊이 500미터의, 도심 한복판을 강타한 괴 구멍의 이미지를 떠올린다. 과연 이 지역이 그런 기대감을 충족할 수 있을지, 벌써부터 의심이 가기 시작했다.


Mui does indeed prove a disappointment (although the inter-racial massacre associated with the sinkhole is rather gruesome), but when the time comes to return to Korea, Yona manages through misadventure to lose the rest of her party, along her passport and wallet, leaving her stranded in the country, setting up the second half of the novel.

Mui and the resort appears to be run by a faceless organisation (or person?) called Paul, which has a neat echo of the Kafkesque way her career foundered:

‘Then where do I get approval?’
‘From Paul.’
Paul was connected to everything here. Yona repeated the word ‘Paul’ in her head, until it started to sound like ‘foul’.


This plays on the two different Korean pronunciations of Paul (both of which I experience when I am there): the English style single syllable 폴 ('Pol') and the more Germanic double syllable 파울 ('Pa-ool'). And the second is identical to the hangeulisation of the loan word 'foul' (used for example in baseball). (see https://namu.wiki/w/%ED%8C%8C%EC%9A%B8)

The author explains her intent in this interview (http://bookanista.com/yun-ko-eun/) with the translator, this theme of the lack of individual accountability in large organisations a key theme of the novel:

I wanted to create an amorphous and anonymous figure who directed the lives of Yona and the other workers on Mui. I named him Paul, but we never really figure out who exactly ‘he’ is. I imagined Paul’s anonymity as a reflection of how power functions today. George Orwell wrote 1984 decades ago, but Big Brother still feels like an ever-approaching menace. I wrote The Disaster Tourist as my own Orwellian dystopia, with Paul acting as a faceless – if not nameless – Big Brother. Even if someone came out and said, “I’m Paul!” I don’t think this revelation would matter. The lack of personal responsibility for one’s actions – in The Disaster Tourist and in real life – is a structural problem... Paul is the manifestation of this lack of personal accountability. He’s all-powerful, but invisible.

Yona reports her intention to grade Mui a '4', where a 1 or 2 score is needed to stay on the roster, although a '4' may indicate there is hope for retention if there are major improvements, but then she finds herself caught up in a sinister plot to make the resort somewhat more interesting to disaster seekers.

This is an entertaining read, one that effectively satires both modern eco-tourism and the impersonal nature of big business, and addresses the folly of humans assuming they control nature rather than vice versa, albeit with little subtlety. The novel has a tone both comic and tragic, as the author explains:

There’s a word in Korean – utpeuda (웃프다) – made from a combination of the words for funny (utgida 웃기다) and sad (seulpeuda 슬프다). It describes a sense of sorrow mixed with recognition of the absurd. This emotion is present in all of my writing.

The translation is excellent, preserving some important Korean elements but doing so in a way that is natural to the English reader.

But I found the denouement a relative disappointment after the set-up, perhaps as, the Korean setting aside, this isn't my usual literary fair, albeit an enjoyable read.

So Paul can't quite give this one his personal approval.
Profile Image for K.J. Charles.
Author 63 books11k followers
Read
October 3, 2021
A sort of crime novel/thriller where the bad guys are capitalism and human nature.

Yona works at a disaster tourism company, is sent to assess one of their trips, and ends up stuck on an island where the disaster is not sexy enough and the money running out. Obvious solution: make a new disaster.

This is basically a story of the damage done by people looking out for themselves. Yona's decisions are mostly made out of fear and self preservation, and we understand the courage it would take for her to step out of line and change things, but they still add up to a lot of damage to others, even before she becomes fully aware of the scale of the plot she's part of.

Bleak. The translation is fairly workmanlike, declarative and affectless (I suppose this is because that's the original's style?), which lands a bit oddly in the last, increasingly weird part of the story. Still, an interesting read.
Profile Image for Aleksandra.
Author 3 books41 followers
October 18, 2020
I give this book a 5, because the main premise really speaks to me. Also, I think it nicely combines various elements and styles which I liked elsewhere, e.g., in a movie ’The Wicker Man’ (I will stop here to avoid spoilers).
Profile Image for michelle (travelingbooknerds).
284 reviews144 followers
March 31, 2023
wow i absolutely loved this novel and it’s commentary on capitalism; class; tourism; corporations and corporate interests; the commodification of femme, disabled, and working class bodies; climate change; a me-first society; sexual predators and how men like to control how women find joy and pleasure; and so much more. there were definitely some aspects of the world that i wish were more explicitly addressed, like exploring PAUL (which reminded me a lot of WCKD from The Maze Runner series) deeper and delving into the truly sinister machinations that would have been extremely satisfying to get, but i also can see how even that is an overall intentional storytelling device being employed by author Yun Ko-eun, which is truly masterful. I can understand anyone who has a little extra wish for that lil exploration and nuggets of knowledge, though, because—same. that would have pushed this book into the 5-star rating for me. but i think right now i’m sitting at a 4-4.5 star rating, leaning heavily toward 4.5 stars.*

i absolutely see this story as a A24 film or an HBO mini-series, or even Apple+. the writing is so cinematic and you can really picture the world so viscerally, the translation by Lizzie Buehler was very engaging and i found myself completely immersed in this story where our lead travel agent of tours to disaster zones of the world finds herself going on a business trip to assess whether or not to keep a disaster trip on their agency roster after attempting to resign after being forcibly sexually assaulted by her boss on multiple occasions only for chaos to insue after an unexpected happening forces Yona (our MC) to stay in the desert island of Mui.

when i was studying for my applied economics degree, we watched a documentary a few times called Jamaica For Sale (2006) which detailed what an island built on tourism was like and what happened when the economy started failing, the disparity between the citizens and the tourists, the performance of having to play up trauma for a way to pay to stay alive and well, or receive medical treatment or food. during the covid-19 pandemic, the islands residents of oahu and maui and many other hawaiian islands were placed on water rations and could not freely use water so that the tourists who were coming in droves as a result of international travel being unavailable to them as an option could have enough water in their hotels. at one point the hospitals beds were so full the nearest available bed was via a 6 hour flight to california.

knowing these things, reading this book, you get a surreal sense of anxiety of how easily something like this novel’s story could actually occur, if it isn’t already to some degree in certain areas of the world. it’s plausible to me.

i feel like this novel and this story are going to stay with me and make a home inside my brain for a while. truly truly in love. wow.

also the authors afterword??? STUNNING. truly an iconic experience. absolutely recommend the audiobook, i inhaled it in one sitting over the course of 3 hours mostly while cooking and eating dinner :)) what a resplendent time.

*edit (8/17/2022): i have decided to settle on a 4.5 star rating rounded up because i literally have not stopped thinking about this novel since i finished reading it back in april. every single day that goes by, i think about this story and it feels more and more urgently real and relevant to me. highly recommend to every single person who lives on planet earth.
Profile Image for Repellent Boy.
569 reviews607 followers
July 18, 2024
Desde hace casi diez años, Yona trabaja en la agencia de viajes Jungle, una peculiar empresa dedicada a crear experiencias turísticas únicas en lugares donde hayan ocurrido grandes desastres, terribles accidentes o matanzas sangrientas. El morbo de este tipo de turistas los lleva a desear viajar al lugar de los hechos para ver con sus propios ojos los destrozos que el incidente ha acarreado y sentir el peligro cerca del lugar, pero siempre con cierta distancia y seguridad. La propia Yona desde joven se ha visto cautivada por este tipo de lugares. Sin embargo, pese a que llegar al puesto de importancia que ha alcanzado en la agencia le ha costado un gran esfuerzo, el acoso que sufre por parte de su jefe, y ante la negativa de esta de aceptarlo, provoca que como castigo sea mandada de vacaciones obligadas a la isla desértica de Mui, un lugar en el sudeste asiático donde hace cincuentas años varios socavones acabaron con la vida de cientos de personas. El paquete turístico que la empresa ofertaba para Mui, ya no es tan exitoso como antes y Yona debe revisar la viabilidad de mantenerlo o acabar con él.

Con toques distópicos, Yun Ko-eun nos presenta un mundo donde el turismo ha alcanzado tales niveles que lejos de beneficiar a los residentes de un lugar y ayudar a incrementar la riqueza y la calidad de la vida de estos, los empobrece, los retira de sus propios hogares en beneficio de los turistas, que no solo producen el encarecimiento de la vida, sino que acaparan los espacios y se hacen dueños de ellos. Unos pocos se enriqueces con esto, mientras que la inmensa mayoría ve como lo pierde todo. Un tema bastante actual que sufrimos en muchas ciudades en la actualidad, que quizás por entenderlo de primera mano, me ha impactado aún más el tema, hasta el punto de ponerme los pelos de punta muchas veces. La crítica que la autora hace del funcionamiento de este sistema y de como unos pocos dirigen y manejan el mundo a costa de la vida de la gran mayoría, me ha parecido brutal y acertadísima. La autora también nos habla de ecologismo y del destrozo que el turismo masivo hace a la naturaleza de estos lugares.

Si algo define a la novela de Yun Ko-eun es que goza de una increíble originalidad, "La turista" es una obra que va cogiendo forma poco a poco, que juega con el lector hasta desconcertarlo, ya que este no es capaz de anticipar que puede ocurrir, ni siquiera intuir hacia donde va la trama, viéndose sumergido en un atmósfera opresiva muy bien creada, y una tensión que va in crescendo desembocando en un clímax espectacular. ¡Ay esas últimas páginas! Las últimas cincuenta son vertiginosas y brutalmente sorprendentes. No han sido pocas las veces que se me ha abierto la boca de par en par sorprendido ante lo que ocurría. Incluso necesitaba releer algunos párrafos para asegurarme de que lo que estaba entendiendo bien.

"La turista" es un thriller coreano, y como coreano que es, es un thriller de corte asiático. Lo digo porque ya he visto alguna reseña que, para no variar, exige encontrar elementos y tempos occidentales en la obra, frustrándose al no identificarlos. Quien quiera leer un thriller de corte occidental, pues que lea un thriller occidental. En mi caso, lo he disfrutado desde la primera página y no me ha durado más de un par de días.

Una cosa que adoro de los thrillers asiáticos, y que amo especialmente de los coreanos, primero en el cine, y últimamente en la literatura gracias a todo lo que nos está llegando, es que tienen la capacidad de tener como base una crítica social bien construida y potente, una problemática que afecta a los individuos y que a través del género de suspense hace que el mensaje llegue alto y claro, de una manera mucho más directa e impactante. No suelo encontrar esto con la misma frecuencia en el thriller occidental, o quizás es que engancho mucho mejor con la forma con la que incluyen o presentan estas críticas los autores asiáticos. Además, en el caso de "La turista" esta crítica se hace a través de una mezcla de auténtica crudeza en lo que cuenta y el más perverso sentido del humor.

Este año estoy teniendo una cantidad increíble de buenas lecturas, algunas muy buenas, otras solo buenas, pero no recuerdo ni una sola mala. Sin embargo, me está costando dar las 5 estrellas, pero como puedo osar no dárselas a "La turista" de Yun Ko-eun, si además de ser un thriller con una crítica social brutal sobre un tema de extrema importancia, de mantener una tensión siempre en aumento mientras alimenta el desconcierto del lector, y de añadir un final que te deja sin palabras, consigue todo esto siendo una historia original, fresca, que no recuerda a nada. A estas alturas, encontrar thrillers que resulten novedosos no es tarea fácil, y dentro de la gran lista de virtudes de esta novela, su originalidad destaca. Por favor, editoriales de España, traed más cositas de Yun Ko-eun, es urgente.
Profile Image for Jenny (Reading Envy).
3,876 reviews3,607 followers
March 6, 2021
Yoni works for Jungle, a tourist agency that specializes in disaster tourism - sites of hurricanes, tsunami, sinkholes, and more. When she starts to lose favor at work, she is sent to the location of one of their trips. The blurb says thriller, I'm going to say more Kafka/Lem/surreal than thrill, but still enjoyable.

I do wonder if the author is trying to say something about Koreans here, and what they are willing to spend money on.

Translated from the Korean and on the Tournament of Books long-but-not-shortlist! I listened to the audiobook in hoopla, a very quick audiobook! I'll also count it for the koreanmarch challenge in Instagram.
Profile Image for Sarah.
1,241 reviews35 followers
April 5, 2020
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.

Thank you Netgalley and Serpent's Tail/Profile Books the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
Profile Image for Bookread2day.
2,482 reviews63 followers
August 21, 2020
My review www.bookread2day.wordpress.com
The Disaster Tourist is the most unique adorable fiction book that I have ever read, just loved loved it! 💕

Five stars all the way ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We all love to go on holiday✈️ or get away at the beach for a few days🏖. When take a break and go somewhere nice on holiday we all love to sightsee📷 🗽⛪️ Or go to a theme park🎢 or go swimming 👙and of course we love to shop💶

But imagine going on holiday to some disaster zones?

Yona in Korea works Jungle travel company as a programming coordinator for ten years, with disaster package that includes visits to Volcano eruptions, earthquakes, war, drought, typhoons and tsunamis and another 152 packages were available.

Yona was the one Jungle worker who was the brains of the company

Once a booking has been paid for a deposit for one of the disaster zone trips it’s impossible to get a refund.

My favourite line was when Yona answers the customer service line saying Ma’am if you cancel, you’ll incur a service fee or I’m sorry sir, but refunds are not possible.

When Yona is sexually harassed by her boss, and he gives her a month off sending her on a break, but not as an employee but as a customer. Yona is to decide where she wants to go and the Jungle company will all the expenses, like a business trip. She chooses a six day stay at Desert sinkhole in Mui.

The story starts to developer to a high top point that I couldn’t stop reading about everything that happened to Yona in the Desert Sinkhole. 🏜

This is one my favourite best books that I can be open with honesty to recommend to you all, don’t miss this unusual story it’s chockablock full of something special to read on every page, absolutely an unputdownable stor waiting to be loved by you.
Profile Image for chantel nouseforaname.
732 reviews381 followers
August 12, 2020
I could definitely see this book as a movie.

A fantastic story! Honestly -- Yona represents so many young people just working and working away for companies that don't give a fuck about their well being, take everything from them including their dignity and would literally let them die to toe the line and build up their business.

The twists and turns through the story, the incorporation of modern workplace issues, and the later sidelined love story was magnificent. Luck is a unique character. I find there are quite a few books where the roles between Yona and Luck are reversed, books about foreign men visiting Asia and being captivated by someone, so this is a nice exchange. God bless the translators who translated this from its native Korean to English.

Internal despair set against the backdrop of ecological and economical warfare, tourism and hospitality, set against finding relief from the daily grind working with people you hate who do you dirty. What could go wrong? LOL

Read it, it's great.
Profile Image for Story.
899 reviews
September 2, 2021
I so enjoyed this satirical and horribly funny (in places) story of Yona, employed by a travel agency arranging tours to disaster zones. After her boss repeatedly sexually assaults her at work and she tries to complain, she is sent as a punishment to a disaster resort that just isn't offering its guests enough misery-bang for their buck. As each step of her trip becomes more and more surreal, the reader is swept along, wondering how--and if--Yona will make it out of there alive.

While parts of the last section of the novel didn't quite work for me, overall this was a fresh and inventive story and one that made some pointed comments about how we live today, and made them in a sharp and often funny way. Recommended.
Profile Image for Mariana.
422 reviews1,916 followers
March 31, 2022
4.5 Estoy en una racha de leer escritoras coreanas maravillosas. Lo disfruté muchísimo.
Profile Image for Eliza.
246 reviews47 followers
June 13, 2021
there's a theme in publishing at the moment where if a book has a female protagonist then it is marketed as 'feminist'. the way we water down the meaning of this word is insane. the only way you could even superficially connect yona's story/character to feminism is if the leading tenets of your feminism is Girlboss, Gaslight, Gatekeep. it's fine if your female-led novel isn't overtly feminist, there's no need to market it in this way.

anyway:
while i appreciate the concept of this book & all the ideas about exploitation and commercial colonialism, i just could not get into it. i think this partially had to do with the translation and how i couldn't connect with the way the translator had chosen to phrase the sentences. the story is intriguing but if i'm taking 6 days to read an 180-page speculative thriller then i don't know what to tell you. i wish i could rate this higher but it's a no from me.
Profile Image for Roman Clodia.
2,727 reviews4,123 followers
July 15, 2020
A bizarre story that becomes increasingly surreal even as it asks critical questions about how tourism intersects with capitalism, raising issues 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!
Profile Image for Abbie | ab_reads.
603 reviews437 followers
March 22, 2020
Thank you @serpentstail for gifting me this intriguing little gem of a novel! Bringing pertinent themes like environmentalism, climate change and the #MeToo movement to the table, The Disaster Tourist is a disaster novel with a difference!
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Yona works for Jungle, a travel agency specialising in trips to disaster zones around the world. Hurricanes, tsunamis, burning trash islands, you name it, they’ll take you there to make you feel better about your own survival. After her boss makes an inappropriate move towards her, Yona is torn on whether to make her complaint official or not, knowing full well what happened to others in her situation. Her boss makes the decision for her however, by sending her on a Jungle trip to pose as a client and check out how that destination is performing. Once there, she finds herself embroiled in a morally murky plot, her own survival on the line...
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A lot is happening in this novel, but I think the author juggles them all successfully. She questions morals and ethics at the same time as cutting edge issues like workplace harassment. What implicates someone as a guilty party? Does an organisation have a collective responsibility?
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She also questions the nature of disasters - why do some natural disasters garner huge outpourings of international support and sympathy, while others are reduced to a couple of lines in a broadsheet, the rest of the world remaining ignorant of their plight? Truly this little novel gives you a lot to mull over, culminating in a deliciously dark ending dripping in irony.
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It’s translated by Lizzie Buehler and she does a fantastic job of conveying that stark style that fans of Korean and Japanese fiction will know and love!
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If you’re looking for something a little off-beat and dark this summer then I recommend this one - out in May!
Profile Image for Jessica Haider.
1,981 reviews282 followers
August 7, 2020
Yona is in her early 30's and has worked at the same job for 10 years. Her job is as a travel program coordinator at Jungle, a Korea-based travel company. Jungle specializes in trips to areas that have been impacted by climate change or natural disaster. Want to visit that city that recently experienced a devastating earthquake so you can gawk at the rubble and the survivors? Jungle has the travel package for you!

Yona doesn't love her job and realizes her job is in danger when her supervisor starts sexually harassing her. Jungle makes a deal with Yona, she can pick from their list of least popular travel packages and go on a business trip as a tourist to review and assess the package. Yona opts to go to Mui, a small island that experienced sinkholes in the past. Yona and the rest of her tour group are seriously underwhelmed with their stay on Mui. While on the island, Yona learns of a plot by the resort to fabricate a new big disaster to bring in bigger disaster tourism crowds.

This was such a clever, quirky read. I really enjoyed it and it only took me a couple of hours total to read. It brings up issues like #metoo, the impact of tourism on small island destinations, the fascination many have with disasters. The story is satirical and contains many moments of biting humor.

This is the author's first novel translated into English and I would definitely check out more of her books if they became available in English.


Thank you to the publisher for the review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
54 reviews38 followers
February 24, 2020
As anyone who has read a few of my reviews will probably have spotted by now, I'm a huge fan of translated Asian fiction, particularly in shorter forms, and it's clear from the past few years that shorter Asian novels are becoming increasingly popular in the West. From runaway success Convenience Store Woman to the newly-released and critically acclaimed Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982, more people are reading these types of books than ever before, and accordingly, publishers are seeing the benefits and opportunities that the genre offers. For readers like me, who are constantly on the hunt for more in the genre, it's rather wonderful.


As a result, when I spotted the beautifully colourful spine of The Disaster Tourist on my Twitter timeline a few weeks ago, I knew I needed to get my hands on a copy pretty darn quickly. It combined an eye-catching jacket with a punchy, one-line pitch that hooked me in straight away. Luckily, Profile were kind enough to send a copy my way and it jumped all the way to the top of my TBR pile. Less than 24 hours later, I'd finished the book, and wow.


The Disaster Tourist follow Yona, a programming coordinator for Jungle, a travel company that specialises in package holidays and tours to locations ravaged by disasters. Options include areas hit by tsunamis, earthquakes, sinkholes, nuclear incidents and more. This is immediately a fascinating concept, particularly when you start digging and discover that this industry exists in the real world - look no further than the companies that organise trips to Chernobyl or areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.


Yona has been working diligently for Jungle for years, but one day she's touched inappropriately by a senior colleague. She doesn't want to push it, fearing for her position, but news spreads around the company and the issue moves out of Yona's control. Rather than tackle the problem, Jungle send Yona on a research trip, to evaluate one of the company's worst-performing trips. And so, Yona finds herself en route to the desert island of Mui, where a sinkhole opened years before, swallowing a vast proportion of the island's population. But when those with vested interests in Mui discover that the scheme is under threat, Yona is dragged into a nefarious scheme that could change her prospects forever.


It's an absolutely ingenius concept, and one I'm shocked not to have seen utilised before. But does the writing and plot live up to it?


In short, yes it does. As with much Asian literature, the writing is clear, precise and sparse. There's very little unnecessary language, with each sentence and paragraph carefully constructed from just the right amount of words to illustrate the scene without needing to overload the reader with description or superfluous adjectives. It makes reading an incredibly crisp experience, and surprisingly compulsive too.


The plot is taut and well-paced throughout, and uses a shocking real world concept to tell a biting satirical tale that feels worryingly plausible. Throughout, the writer uses real-world disasters as examples and place-setting, some of which I'd never heard about, with some so shocking that I immediately assumed they were fictionalised in the first instance (like towns struggling through decades-long underground fires and trash islands larger than countries). It's cleverly done and in many ways makes the narrative feel like it could actually be happening, particularly with the current state of the world.


The characters are all well-constructed, and I really loved the way that only certain characters earned names. Most are defined solely by their role - 'the writer', 'the manager' etc. - with only four or five characters named throughout. It's an interesting device that illustrates far more about each character's significance and role than one might first assume.


All in all, I absolutely adored this book. I devoured it incredibly quickly and found myself left craving more. It's fantastically readable, satisfyingly biting, perfectly formed story of human folly and greed that will leave you questioning your own thoughts and position in society. I would wholeheartedly recommend to all readers, and hope to see much more from the author in years to come.

I received a review copy from Profile in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
Profile Image for Emmkay.
1,325 reviews136 followers
September 2, 2021
I really enjoyed this translated Korean novel about a woman who works for a travel company specializing in 'disaster tourism,' putting together packages for people who want to visit sites of disasters for some gawping with a side of voluntourism. Yona has been working for Jungle for years, and finds her corporate star in decline as she is subjected to sexual harassment by a supervisor. Rather than leaving, however, she accepts a free trip to one of their destinations, with a view to deciding whether it should be cut from their offerings. When Yona arrives in Mui, the site of a decades-ago sinkhole, she can see why the itinerary lacks appeal, but the experience is increasingly puzzling.

This was a snappy, observant read with some wild plotting that beautifully underscored its points about human behaviour (no one needs to look at their own contribution too closely if they're just a cog with deliberately limited awareness of the machine, right?), tourism, and late capitalism. I would 100% read more from this author.
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