In the theater of capitalism, we perceive everything through monetized value. Down to the last click of a button, a dollar figure is assigned to each and every action we take. Every last twitch and flicker of an eyeball is measured by how much they are worth. The Disaster Tourist takes this concept and asks a very dystopian question: what is the worth of our empathy?

It is also the question that The Disaster Tourist’s protagonist Yona Ko wrangles with often. As a programme manager for travel company Jungle, she designs tour packages in disaster zones. In order to do this, she gauges the value of disasters by how much emotion she can evoke from the travellers. It depends on a cycle of emotional reactions that range from shock to compassion to gratitude for being alive.

When emotion is the product, it is then forbidden outside of generating revenue with it. As if to demonstrate this, Jungle operates on a principle of offering zero empathy unless it is for profits. Kim’s relentless and gratuitous harassment of the weak is just one facet of it. The impossibility of a refund that is only given at the purchaser’s death is another. Showing any sort of emotion is a sign that they don’t fit within Jungle’s standards. This is why Yona Ko withstands the sexual offenses of Kim without ever showing any kind of feeling towards it. It is why when her fellow employees stand up against Kim, she refuses to understand their position and join them in protest. She starts out as a silent participant of the system, who relinquishes all liabilities to a greater authority known as Jungle.

Against this backdrop, Yona is sent on a work trip to a poverty stricken island nation called Mui under the guise of investigating whether a travel package surrounding an old sinkhole should be shut down due to its laggard performance. Yona correctly identifies that the problem is that the disaster is far too in the past, and it does not result in enough emotional reactions from visitors. Then an opportunity arises. Yona discovers a plan to engineer a new disaster in order to bring back tourist dollars from Jungle, as well as receive disaster recovery funding.

A colorful cast of co-conspirators come together. This includes Yona, whose role is to create a new tour program that will ensure Jungle’s commitment to Mui. Then there is the writer, who creates a script that will blow life into this fake disaster. He is the one who carefully puts together the emotional beats, fabricating everything, from the backstories of victims to each line the victims will utter up to the fateful day. Lastly, it is all orchestrated by the resort manager, who is determined to save Mui by raising its economic standing with this master stroke. They attempt a daring plot to create new sinkholes that will seemingly swallow a hundred people. They want to revive the empathy that people used to feel for Mui, and with it bring money into the island. In a memorable soliloquy to Yona, the writer describes how a disaster needs careful crafting for lasting empathy.

“When people browse through newspapers after a disaster, they don’t just want to see how terrible the wreckage is. They’re also looking for an emotionally resonant story, sprouting up from the pain-”¹

During all of this, Yun Ko-eun does not try to recreate the wheel, but instead builds upon a world we are used to. The travel packages with tours of disaster zones and volunteering combined are very much reminiscent of the vapid voluntourism that is already an established industry. The pretend-suffering of the Mui people resembles that of the actual real-life homeless who return to their foreign cars after a day of panhandling. The scripting of a disaster reminds us of countless faked videos on social media that manipulate the viewer. The divide between the crocodiles and the richer Mui residents are essentially a mirror image of our own cruelty towards the poor. It is all disturbingly familiar, yet also pushed to the brink. It is very effective at allowing us to believe that such a world can exist, while also being shocked at how terrible what the manager and the writer is planning. We are indeed used to everything being commercialized, yet we want to believe that certain things should still be left untouched. Still, we cannot help but wonder how this is well within the realm of possibility. The only respite comes in the form of the innocents, particularly in Luck, who acts as a guide to Yona and shows her the more human side of Mui.

What sets Yun Ko-eun’s world apart however, is its natural acceptance for the demand to see suffering. Time and time again, we are led to focus on the suppliers of this demand, that they are simply providing a service people are trying to buy, and thereby acquitting even the most inhuman actions taken to fulfill this. All of this almost makes the reader forget about the insidious hypocrisy of these disaster tourists. In a memorable exchange between Yona and a customer, Yona is asked by a man for a refund because his child is sick. Yona refuses, and the man demands for her to be a ‘decent person’. There is overwhelming irony in decency being asked by someone who has paid a large sum to witness suffering.

In such a way, the industry of disaster tourism almost resembles that of the illegal drug trade, where the suppliers stop at no amount of suffering being created to provide the goods, and the final users are shielded from witnessing that suffering while indulging themselves. This gap of suffering between the provider and the final user grows throughout the book. At first Yona finds out that no one is going to actually die. The sinkhole disaster they are planning will use mannequins, which is the name they’ve given cadavers from the morgue they will plant at the site. But as a neighboring real disaster puts their fake disaster’s success at risk, the stakes are heightened. This pushes the planners of the disaster to introduce more real harm to the plot. Yona also discovers that the crocodile problem the manager mentioned wasn't about actual crocodiles at all, but about those who the manager considered undesirable. This is where Yona reaches a breaking point. She experiences what is unacceptable under a capitalist system. She feels real empathy that cannot be commodified.

This is despite the fact that even Yona’s spontaneous romance with Luck, who became her lover through a mutual understanding of the true beauty of Mui, was accepted because it became a part of the writer’s script. It managed to find its purpose in the overall package that would be offered for consumption. However, when she went off the script and alerted Luck of the coming danger, her empathy for the island and its people inherently became not monetizable. Unlike her earlier silence for her fellow victims of harassment, she speaks up, finally reaching a moment of growth. For that she is cut from the script by death.

The annihilation that follows comes swiftly as if it is punishment from a higher power. The wrong-doers are swept away by the tsunami. It does not differentiate. The manager and the writer, as well as those with even the tiniest parts, are all killed. Yun shows that silence does not emancipate anyone, no matter how little of a role they have.

There comes the final twist of the knife. Yona’s story as told by the writer’s script is revealed to the world and becomes canon within the Mui tragedy. Her love for Luck becomes a mere tool to fulfill the emotional hunger of disaster tourists. The product is complete. All that is left is Luck’s despair.

On the surface The Disaster Tourist might be a warning against the hyper capitalization of our society and the callous search for entertainment that results. Even the one real bit of empathy that was free from commercialization, gets turned into a story by the script of the deceased writer. Luck is haunted by tourists who are eager to have their money’s worth by confirming the truth of their romance. Nothing is left sacred.

But that would be a shallow understanding of Yun's intent. This is not a warning, but a plea. In the world where every single story has become monetized for its potential for empathy, The Disaster Tourist asks the reader to be the true witness to Yona’s story, one that is not tainted by any capitalistic intentions, but one that is beautiful for her final commitment to humanity. It asks us to remember that behind all of these price tags attached to our feelings, we are still humans capable of empathy for the sake of others.