Born in Jeju in 1963, Dongwan 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 Kyonggi University since 2001. Since 2011, he has been the director of the Tourism Research Institute and is currently conducting research on “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 a number of 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 local 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)".