Born in Jeju in 1963, KO Dong-wan studied undergraduate, Master's and Doctoral courses at Sungkyunkwan University, he has been more interested in tourism residents and has been teaching and researching "community-based tourism development (CBT)" at the Department of Tourism Development, and he has served as the Head of Academic Affairs and the Vice President of Seoul Campus at Kyonggi University. He served as a Vice Chairman of the Tourism Sciences Society of Korea, the deliberation or Advisory Committee Member of local governments of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism etc., and the Chairman of the Landscape Committee of Jeju Provincial. He has published three books and about 90 research papers, including "Understanding and Researching Postmodern Tourism (2008).