• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.180-184
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• 2024

Since COVID-19, many foreign tourists have visited Korea for medical tourism. When statistical data were checked from 2022, after COVID-19, the number of foreign patients visiting Korea for two years was 24.8 million, an increase of 70.1% from 2020. It was confirmed that it has achieved a 50% level compared to 2019 (Statistics Office, 2023). Therefore, to create a development plan by linking medical tourism and wellness tourism, the purpose of this study is to find the link between medical tourism and wellness tourism as big data and present a development plan. In this research method, medical tourism, and wellness tourism for two years from 2022 to 2023 from the post-COVID period as big data are set as central keywords to compare text data to find common points. When analyzing wellness tourism and medical tourism, it was confirmed that most wellness tourism had a greater frequency than medical tourism. This confirmed that wellness tourism occupies a larger pie than medical tourism. As a result, when checking the word frequency, it was confirmed that wellness tourism and medical tourism share a lot as complex tourism products, and when checking 2-gram, to attract many medical tourists, it is necessary to combine medical tourism clusters and wellness tourism according to each other's characteristics among local governments.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.19-35
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• 2021

Purpose : Recently, there has been a growing social interest in aging well. Consequently, wellness tourism has begun to attract attention. However, no studies on whether wellness tourism has any objective health benefits have been carried out yet. In this study, we assess the health benefits as well as the degree of improvement in health of a wellness tourism program. Methods : The study involved 30 adults over the age of 19 who live in the Gyeongsangnam-do region. Participants were evaluated on health indicator before and after participating in wellness tourism program. Participants took heart rate variability (HRV) test, and LFT, RFT, CBC, FBS HbA1C, and CRP test were conducted before and after the tour. Additionally, a survey was conducted before and after the program, and participant satisfaction was evaluated. Statistical differences in the tests conducted before and after the program were analyzed using a design t-test, a Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and McNemar's test. Results : The study showed that participants were very satisfied with and had significant health improvements after the wellness tourism program. The program was also found to be beneficial in improving participants' emotions as follows: BDI (p<.001), fatigue recovery (p=.006), stress relief (p=.003), improved quality of life (p<.05), and improved sleep quality (p<.001). Conclusion : Wellness tourism programs are specifically beneficial for improving participants' emotions (depression, anxiety), fatigue, stress levels, quality of life, and sleep. Therefore, they are beneficial to the overall health. Further research in the future by way of a follow-up study on the long-term effects on health after short-term interventions will provide more validation data.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.317-323
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• 2019

Amid the recent growing social demand for wellness culture and healing tourism, I, through a literature survey and case study, reviewed the conditions of healing tourism in Gangwon-do as a destination of healing tourism, and examined the development project of Gangwon-do type healing tourism and commercialization of the wellness perspective. According to the survey, it was found that the Yeongdong area in Gangwon Province had excellent healing-based conditions in virtue of abundant natural resources, but it was found that it was necessary for local governments to cooperate in order to prevent overlapping investments and create synergy effects by connecting with one another as development contents or business items of healing tourism projects overlap or remain in the planning stage. In the case of Goseong-gun, which was reviewed as the main site, it has high potential as a silver-healing tour and if the County seeks a wellness merchandising strategy for each healing tourism target based on a therapy program linked with local specialized resources, and effectively links and specializes regional strengths in Gangwon-do's Yeongdong region, it is expected to become a regional success story of operating the development of the local tourism for silver and health-oriented tourists.