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The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun
During this pandemic, I have mostly avoided reading “disaster fiction,” saving my emotional energy for the evening TV news. I was intrigued to this just published translation of Yun Ko-The eun’s Disaster Tourist, though, because it is being advertised as a “satirical Korean eco-thriller with a militant feminist perspective,” especially as Women In Translation Month approaches.
Although the lead character Yona fell short of the feminist ideals I’d hoped for, cultural topics like the characters’ fight for personal identities outside of their occupations resonated strongly from the onset. Despite this, I was still intrigued enough to keep reading because of how odd both her personal situation and the travel agency she worked for were.
In addition to earthquakes, war, typhoons, and tsunamis, Jungle divided disasters into thirty-three separate categories with 152 different packages. Yona intended to design a volunteer programme and a tour of the tsunami’s aftermath for the city of Jinhae.
Excellent intent versus execution
In this satirical thriller, the humour quickly turns grim. Particularly unsettling are the characters’ seemingly straightforward, objective arguments for the unimaginable. Additionally, Yun Ko-overt eun’s references to contemporary geopolitical events give this fantastical story a serious, foreboding undertone.
Yun Ko-powerful eun’s simile was effectively translated in a number of important cases by Lizzie Beuhler. Night came. Yona carried her camera around and captured images of the inside of the house. Damp bedding, a naked light bulb that drooped like the tongue of someone who’d hanged herself, the rusted roof and a door that looked like it had decided the day it was installed that it wouldn’t fit into its frame.
However, the overall narrative of this work lacks the subtlety and grace that I’ve come to anticipate from Korean translations. The ability of this English translation of The Disaster Tourist to compel reflection on our responses to disasters and what actually drives them, as well as greater awareness of the hidden, unpleasant effects our actions as tourists may have on other people’s lives, is where it succeeds the most.
The fiction of Yun Ko-eun serves as a chilling reminder of how easily good intentions may turn into dominance and disaster. Everyone will find The Disaster Tourist to be grisly food for thought, but especially those who are busy organising their post-pandemic travel plans.
About The Book
Yona has spent years working at a desk as a programming coordinator for Jungle, a tour operator that specialises in package vacations to disaster-stricken areas. The corporation offers her an alluring offer: a free ticket for one of their most popular trips, to the desert island of Mui, in an effort to discredit her complaints when a senior colleague touches her inappropriately.
She accepts the invitation and visits the isolated island, whose main draw is an allegedly dramatic sinkhole. Yona realises that the firm has risky plans to create an environmental catastrophe to make the trip more fascinating when the clients who paid a premium for the trip start to get upset. However, when she tries to raise the alarm, she learns that she has put her own life in jeopardy.
The Review
The Disaster Tourist
9.5 Score
A very unusual story, an interesting concept, holiday to a disaster area. What happens when the disaster becomes old news? Perhaps someone can ‘plan’ a ‘natural’ disaster to get tourists to come.....exploiting vulnerable and poor in remote areas, island etc....a scary thought!
PROS
- Timely and well translated.
- Holiday nightmare.
- Appropriately Strange.
- A story of Love and horror.
CONS
- Badly written.
- Disappointing.
- Just a bit boring.
- Not worth the read.
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