Born in Jeju in 1963, Dong-Wan Ko studied undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs at Sungkyunkwan University, worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois (UIUC), and has been teaching and researching regional tourism development at the Department of Tourism Development at Gyeonggi University since 2001. Since 2011, he has been the director of the Tourism Research Institute and is currently researching “community-based tourism development” (a 6-year project) at the National Research Foundation of Korea. He has served as a deliberation or advisory committee member of many central ministries and local governments including the Korea Tourism Association, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and the chairman of the Jeju Island Landscape Committee. With more interest in residents, he is advancing his path to becoming a progressive tourism scholar. He has published 3 books and about 90 research papers, including "Understanding and Research of Postmodern Tourism (2008)".