The Path and the Pavement: (Pre)modern Landscapes of Ecotourism on the Jeju Olle Trail, South Korea

Abstract

Urban and rural landscapes are tied to shifting modes of production and corresponding changes in social relations, and in South Korea are deeply entwined due to government development policies, including ecotourism. Ecotourism development often relies on a binary understanding of landscapes, and like all binaries, pre-modern and modern landscapes are inextricably interlinked. In this article, we examine the development of ecotourism on Jeju Island to discern how class struggles over material landscapes and discursively-produced, imaginary landscape ownership emerged through the creation of the Jeju Olle Trail, and how local people experienced individually and collectively the tensions of urban-centered modernization in South Korea that played out through ecotourism. We use the framework of political ecology to conceptualize class conflicts over material and imagined landscapes, specifically rural landscapes resulting from the uneven geographies of economic development of an Asian NIC (Newly Industrialized Country).