On Legal Definition of Tourism - an Exploratory Approach -

In line with the recent trend of increasing legislative demand related to tourism laws, this study aims to investigate the problem of having no legal definition of tourism in the Framework Act on Tourism of the Republic of Korea and present an amendment proposal for its reform. As for legislative cases related to tourism in Korea, we explored the bills related to tourism pending in the 22nd National Assembly and the current tourism-related laws in force in the country. As for overseas legislative cases, we analyzed tourism laws of Northeast Asian and Southeast Asian countries that were fully or partially translated by the World Laws Information Center. First, in the evaluation of legislative trend, our analysis revealed that the definition of "Healing-Wellness Tourism Industry" was under review and second, in the analysis of the current laws related to tourism in Korea, we identified the trend of evaluating tourism as "tourism activity" rather than travel or leisure activities. Third, the definition of convergence tourism as a sociocultural phenomenon was also identified in tourism-related laws and other laws. These findings indicated the need for the Framework Act on Tourism to clearly establish a provision on the definition of tourism, as a superior law. Fourth, it is worth noting that the tourism laws of other countries had provisions with the definition of tourism established in detail. The significant and distinctive contribution of the present study lies in that it proposed principles and components constituting the legal definition of tourism. The limitation is that more cases of overseas tourism laws would be needed in the follow-up studies to confirm and develop the findings presented in this study.