Elsevier, an information analysis company, released the '2023 World Top 2% Scientist' list last December. The number of the world's top 2% scientists indicates the number of researchers with world-class research competency that a university has, and Hanyang University has 95 people named on the list. Professor Hyun Sang-hyup, a professor at the Department of Tourism, is not only the world's top 2% researcher but also was chosen as the top researcher of Hanyang University for six continuous years, from 2018 to 2023. Here is a talk with Professor Hyun, who suggested a new paradigm for tourism studies, following the change of the era.

During his twenty-year tourism research, he published more than three hundred research results through papers. His main field of research is 'the aviation industry' and 'the convention industry', which are the core of the tourism industry. He has been researching the quests for the aviation industry's quantitative and qualitative growth and internationalization strategies for the MICE (Meeting, Incentives, Convention, Exhibition) industry

By conducting research, he saw a limitation of research that is bound to the fields of aviation and convention, when they are not fused to other disciplines. Later, after thinking that tourism is a fused discipline and that it can contribute to the betterment of humankind's quality of life, he opened the research path of 'neo-fusion tourism'. Professor Hyun said, "By reflecting on the research of the past twenty years, I started the 'neo-fusion tourism' as I thought it was time to suggest a new paradigm for tourism which is different from that of the past." 

The 'neo-fusion tourism' aims at improving the quality of people's lives through interdisciplinary studies with practical disciplines. It is that through tourism theories one re-analyzes the results that practical studies such as medicine, engineering, and psychology suggest and gains synergy effects by planning research with the new paradigm. 

Professor Hyun was especially interested in the fusion with medicine, among other practical studies. He said, "While thinking of the ways to make tourism have a positive role in societal development, I focused on the combination with medicine, a practical discipline."

Professor Hyun explained, "By implementing medicine that deals with the life and death of humans, I wanted to prove the effectiveness of tourism societally." He focused on psychoanalysis, among many other fields of medicine. He considered ways to cure depression by going on a trip and concluded that communication through tours can lower depression.

Going a step further from the research, he is studying ways to cure depression in long-term or semi-permanently through tours. Professor Hyun explained, "If tourism can suggest a new direction of mental care, it will contribute to a bringing of economic effect and an increase of humanity's happiness index. The core of neo-fusion tourism is suggesting its cure method that is different from the medication that medicine suggests and contributing to the happiness of humanity and social development by finding ways to coexist with medicine."

Professor Hyun is now publishing excellent research results in a journal, as editor-in-chief of the Korea MICE Tourism Society. His job is to have a look at various tourism research papers to be published in the 'MICE Tourism Research' and choose excellent papers among them and publish them. He said, "While working as editor-in-chief, the most important thing I consider is to select excellent research papers that can contribute to the development of tourism." 

Before opening neo-fusion tourism, aviation was a field in which Professor Hyun had the most interest and passion. He emphasized, "Aviation industry is a national key industry and also a core industry that supports the tourism industry as well." Currently, he is working hard on researching together with his fellow students working in airline companies and doing many industry-university cooperation activities so that students can go work in aviation-related academia or industries.

An admiration for the tourism industry was the crucial factor that made him study tourism. He realized that tourism is a national key industry that deals with the whole world, as he read many books and experienced video materials. Later he got into the Department of Tourism at Hanyang University and enlarged his interest in tourism. After finishing his undergraduate course, he went to the United States and completed his Master's and Ph.D. degrees there. He shared his love for tourism by saying, "The more I studied tourism, the more interest I got, which made me think this was a nice choice of a major.

Professor Hyun said, "Going further from being chosen as the world's top 2% scientist and the best researcher of Hanyang University for the past six years, I would like to be the best researcher in the whole world. I want to shine the name of Hanyang University, which enabled me to study and research as much as I wanted."

He is a researcher with active research activities and also a professor who gives good teachings to his students. Professor Hyun said, "I wanted to be remembered as a professor who provided a new paradigm by breaking the previous set concepts of social science and started the 'neo-fusion tourism'."

Continued, he delivered hearted advice to Hanyangians. "Study your major course hard but yet, redefine your major and think how to provide new direction within it. Then think what kind of new paradigm you might need in it. When you go through a thorough stage of consideration, you will have a different eyesight that highlights your major.