Reminder: Dark Tourism Isn't Just About Tragedy.
With dark tourism’s tendency to portray sites associated with death, disasters, and atrocities, visitors often leave with negative connotations and emotions. However, the educational and remembrance aspects coexist in these places to prevent the repetition of disaster. If humans decide to recognize dark tourism as evil and look away from the dark side of their history, similar tragedies would happen. Be it the parents at Sewol and Itaewon or the protestors at the Wednesday demonstration, every site we visited gave us a sense of responsibility and awareness that we as the youth of today should instill in our actions. Hence, we as students have the responsibility to remember, respect and reflect on the state’s role and how we can make this world a better place.
We may have entered the sites of tragedy with a heavy heart. While interacting with families of victims or even just standing on the same ground where people lost their lives, all of us surely went through sad and depressed emotions. However, we did not leave with the same feelings.
We left with hope, we left with responsibility for the future,with the aim that we will not let history repeat itself again.