Pros and Cons of Dark Tourism
Dark tourism also known as ‘Thanatourism’ especially in the academic arena, is the tourism activities mainly in the heritage or historical sites with controversies and other attractions and exhibitions of death, disaster, memorial sites or the seemingly macabre that were shadowed in the past. It is a concept, started in mid 1990s/2000s, actually transforming war or disaster zones into tourism or travel destinations. Such sites and attractions are gaining popularity and attentions of number of visitors, more than half a million per year in recent decades. For example: Auschwitz museum in Oswiecim, Poland; Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. Japan; Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Peace park Jeju Island, S. Korea etc. In the history of human civilizations and developments, many natural or manmade devastations and disasters occurred, in which millions of people sacrificed their lives, many peoples lost their loved ones. These zones of wars and disasters/dev