Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's a real pleasure for me to have a presentation with you. Before I move to the main issues on my presentation, I want to tell you a change we noticed in the recent years.

　I do teach tourism management in Kyunghee University. I belong to College of Tourism of that University. In Korea the students have to pass the exam, and they have certain scores, and the average score of the College of Tourism students is getting higher. For example, this year, the year of 2001, the average score of tourism majored students is higher than the law school students of the university. So people start to being aware of the importance of tourism in Korea. So it can be good news to tourism industry, because they can have valuable human resources. But bad news is by the time the students try to find a job, it may be hard for them to have a satisfactory job in the industry. So the situation in real world is not very good in terms of tourism industry as a whole, and the tourism development condition is not a very favorable condition for ecotourism either.

　So my topic is basically about giving equal wealth and opportunities to local people achieving sustainable development through ecotourism. In the seminar brochure, the printing material you have now, I suggested prototype principle for benefiting local resident side by ecotourism, and the procedure I proposed is mostly led by central government or local government. However in this presentation, I will emphasize local people's willingness to accept ecotourism as an alternative for their living.

　The way local residents choose and perceive ecotourism is a key to success in ecotourism. There are maybe some differences between mass tourism and eco-tourism. From the differences we can get a logic to adopt ecotourism as an alternative. For example, in mass tourism, local people are exploited as the resource for the tourism industry productions. They are not considered as major benefit receiver in the tourism development process in mass tourism. The other issue is severe leakage from tourism business outside the community. The benefits from the tourism industries are mainly transported from the communities to the entrepreneur outside the communities.

　This picture shows the Kunmyong Resort in Cheju Island, the famous tourist spot in Korea. I understand Dr. Varma was in the Island a couple of days ago for attending WTO conference. The Resort belongs to Soggi-Po (phone.) City, that collects 60 percent of the tax income from the Resort. Nevertheless, the Soggi-Po citizens don't appreciate the Resort as their life saver, because they believe most of the revenue is going outside the Island. In mass tourism system very little benefit in the form of wages is left to be distributed among the local people. So, local people think what is left behind, they say, is garbage and pollution and culture losing its identity.

　But eco-tourism has a strength and potential in terms of many points. The first one is it produces some products for niche market and new market. And eco-tourism market in Korea especially is growing rapidly, and it provides a new experience and products to the tourist market. And tourism experts point three things are very important in tourism represented by "3-e's": entertainment, excitement and education. But eco-tourism is very important in terms of that it produces educational outcome. And it also deals with environmental concern.

　Eco-tourism has a lot of potential and strength but reality always doesn't match the ideal textbook type of theory. First of all, local people may be against eco-tourism. They are not even aware of the value and potentiality of the resource. They don't know about eco-tourism concept even though they know about the importance of visitors to the community. They believe that eco-tourism is not providing very big profit to community, and conservation is sometimes an obstacle. In terms of their right to maximize their economic benefit, conservation is perceived to be a regulation to local people.

　Anyhow, eco-tourism started being evidenced nationwide in Korea. So I am going to show some several cases of eco-tourism in Korea. The first one is about the mud experience in Korea. The mud experience is one of the popular eco-tourism in Korea. As you are aware, east, south, west boundary of Korea is ocean. Especially in the west sea of Korea, mud can be experienced easily; through the experience the importance of mud in terms of environmental purification can be learned. But to the local people, mud field is sea production place where they catch and collect sea clam and octopuses, and so on. Now many NGOs with mission of environmental protection is active in interpreting the importance of mud to the younger generation. The eco-tourism oriented country like Australia has a quality interpreting program by professional rangers and experts. The interpreting can be done by local people in Korea, then it would produce more satisfactory experience.

　The third example can be a whale watching. Actually whale watching is not very active yet in Korea. But several port cities such as Pohang, Sochou, Inchon, Mokpo, can be major whale-watching ports to destination. In this situation most of the local people in the cities may put a lot higher priority on traditional fishing and sea plantation rather than on whale watching. They don't think those two things, the first, industry production, and the tourism can get together. Major tourism countries have already succeeded in attracting eco-tourists by whale watching. Whale watching provides also the "3-e" phenomenon I have mentioned: excitement, entertainment and educational output.

　Bird watching is another eco-tourism type, which is growing in terms of popularity. City of Chorwon, the city is famous for its attractiveness of winter bird watching place, Korean Government once considered the possibility of pronouncing Chorwon as wild-life protected area. But residents protested against the protected area decision because they worried that their right to use land and property on their own can be limited if the community is declared as protected area.

　And we have also dinosaur print fossil places. It could be found in many places, especially in southern sea-sided area. The places start attracting tourists, but activity program or interpreting service are not provided yet. And most of the residents are not very active in positioning the resource as eco -tourism attraction.

　In Korea we have very wide variety of cultural heritage and the residents' lifestyle in authentic culture. But it has not been packaged or coordinated. So it can be pointed that this kind of resource can be packaged with eco -tourism resource.

　This old gentleman trained a hawk for hunting. So this place is famous for his hunting works. It is located in Chunyang(phone.) near Mountain Mai in Chongbu(phone.) Province. In the places many resources can be produced as tourism products, for example, there is a rice field, beautiful rice field called "darrenghi"(phone.), and there is a fountain called " damei"(phone.). The fountain is the source of Sunchon River, and many other cultural heritage like Lungmuibing(phone.).

　As suggested in my paper, there are many activities which local people can participate, but the problem is local people don't have much experience and knowledge for doing businesses. If they want to sell local products to tourists, they have to know, for example, marketing strategy of product itself, design, pricing, distributing and promotion. So as Mr. Morgans pointed, in Korea we need community involvement and we need to educate them in terms of managing or operating the eco-tourism businesses. Local people can sell the products to consumers who have not visited the community yet through delivery sales. In that way, the local community can attract new visitors, expanding the size of visitor volume.

　And local people in eco-tourism area are partly doing bed and breakfast type of business already. Since eco-tourists or culture-oriented tourists want to stay more local culture experiencing accommodation, so instead of a hotel, motel or condominium, the traditional house or tourist farm can serve as alternative accommodation, providing alternative income source to local people.

　This picture shows the traditional straw -thatched house, which was a symbol of poverty in the past. But it can become attractive accommodation alternative to the Korean domestic travelers, and even to the in-bound FIT, free independent foreign travelers. But the problem is it's not very easy to find the kind of authentic straw-thatched house because in the early 1970's President Pak Jeongheui decided to remove that house. He led the movement called New Bldgs.(phone.) Movement for the economic growth, so most of the straw -thatched houses were removed from Korea.

　In the material, as you see in the picture like blank clay used for building, the house is known very good for human health, curing cancers and many other diseases. Problem is local people as owner of the traditional accommodation have to know how to manage the facilities and the way to serve tourists as customers and promote the use of the facilities.

　And the other example which local people can operate is a traditional tea or herb medicine training center as a tourist experiencing product. This type of product can satisfy both cultural and health concern needs of tourists.

　Eco-tourism is not trading of wealth and conservation of resources. Eco-tourism can boost up the economy of local community by adopting eco-tourism cooperative concept. The system can distribute wealth equally and foster the well-being of all the local people. And also the system gives local people awareness to conserve natural resources, local wisdom, cultural heritage, etc.

　In conclusion, the eco-tourism cooperative is kind of a new concept in Korea. It aims to establish sustainable tourism development, which is in contrast to the current tourism business entrepreneurs' ideas and trading practices which are aiming to promote individual business advantages and business monopoly groups, etc. Also it aims to distribute tourism business opportunities and equal wealth to the local people in the community.

　Thank you very much.