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Abstract

Pop-culture tourism has continuously grown its market among those who are fanatic of pop-culture, and destination marketers have noticed pop-culture as an effective marketing tool to attract more visitors. Pop-culture has been dominant by the US, but interestingly, a recent phenomenon sees a contra-cultural flow. This paper explores contraflow pop-culture tourism and guides the reader to how to understand this new tourism niche. Reviewing the case of transnational fandom of South Korean pop-culture, so called “Korean Wave” or “Hallyu” and its impact on inbound tourism, this paper suggests digital mediation as a key driver of contraflow pop-culture and transnational fandom, pop-culture as a vehicle for change destination image, and pop-culture tourism as a driving force of creative economy.

Keywords

Pop-culture tourism, Contracultural flow, Transnational fandom, Korean Wave, Hallyu, Special interest tourism

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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