A re-examination of tourism and peace: The case of the Mt. Gumgang tourism development on the Korean Peninsula

Tourism can transcend governmental boundaries by bringing people closer together through the understanding of different cultures, heritages, and beliefs. Therefore, it is potentially one of the most important vehicles for promoting peace among the peoples of the world. Although previous South Korean governments have historically proposed a variety of actions to contribute to peace on the Korean Peninsula, there has been little success. However, the Mt. Gumgang tourism development, the hallmark of the Sunshine Policy of former president of South Korea, Dae Jung Kim, is different from previous tourism initiatives as it has had more tangible and practical outcomes that have contributed to the promotion of peace on the divided Peninsula. To this end, the South Korean government has applied the insights of neofunctionalism to the Mt. Gumgang tourism development. This is an approach to integration theory from the perspective of liberalism that has been heralded in international politics. According to this approach, it is expected that the Mt. Gumgang tourism development can be used as a tool to maintain peaceful circumstances, which results in spill-over effects, enlargement of activity scopes, and a heightened level of commitment on the Korean Peninsula. The purpose of this study is to empirically test the hypothesis that the Mt. Gumgang tourism development contributes to the peace of the Korean Peninsula by employing the theory of neofunctionalism. To test this hypothesis, this study proposes a Peace Index and investigates the spill-over effects by utilizing the Mt. Gumgang tourism development as a test case. The results of this study indicate that the view that tourism contributes to peace is valid but tenuous since the impact of the Mt. Gumgang tourism development in the promotion of peace was less significant than expected. Consequently, the results of this study also indicate that neofunctionalism, which has been developed for western political systems, needs to be re-examined when applied to the unique, dynamic, and complex political circumstances on the Korean Peninsula.