Yun Ko-eun's 'The Disaster Tourist' picked up for screen adaptation

Yun Ko-eun’s award-winning novel, “The Disaster Tourist,” often dubbed as a “dystopian feminist eco-thriller,” is set for a screen adaptation, its publisher Minumsa announced, Friday.

Yun has entered into a licensing agreement with CJ ENM-backed production companies, Bon Factory and Fifth Season. She will serve as the series’ original author and co-executive producer.

Known for producing a string of local hit dramas, Bon Factory's portfolio features titles like “What's Wrong with Secretary Kim” (2018) “True Beauty” (2020), “Work Later, Drink Now” (2021) and “Mask Girl” (2023). Meanwhile, Fifth Season has been behind the Emmy Award-winning series “Severance” and the Jason Momoa-starring “See."

“The Disaster Tourist” narrates the story of Yona, who has worked for a decade as a programming coordinator at a peculiar travel agency called Jungle. The company specializes in offering package holidays to locations ravaged by tsunamis, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

She contemplates leaving her job after being the victim of workplace sexual harassment but is presented with a curious offer from the company – a free trip to the remote island of Mui. During her journey, she uncovers the firm’s plan to engineer an environmental catastrophe for added “dramatic excitement” in their vacation packages.

Translated into English by Lizzie Buehler, the novel became the first Korean literary work to win the prestigious CWA Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation in the United Kingdom in 2021. It has been published in 11 countries, including the United States, France, Italy, Japan and China.

Since her literary debut in 2008 with “The Zero G Syndrome,” Yun has built a strong body of work, including novels and short story collections such as “Table for One” and “Aloha.”

Her latest novel, “Art on Fire,” was released in Korea in October and is slated for English publication in 2025.