Tourism as reflexive reconstructions of colonial past

This paper examines ways in which tourism can create a safe area where political contestations can be expressed and communicated. Utilising a longer-term ethnographic research, this paper unravels ways in which local tourists reflexively reconstruct colonial past, within the context of two royal palaces in South Korea. Individual narratives highlight the intricate and complex dynamics of heritage and nationhood, by way of either confirming or contradicting official discourses and nationalist sentiments. Individual narratives contribute to challenging the distinction between the official and the unofficial and the ideological and the emotional, thereby highlighting the ambivalent nature of colonial heritage. This paper recognises the liminal and transformative force of tourism as a drive for oppositional and alternative readings of a shameful past.