VI
EN
The Hwacheon Ice Fishing Festival organizing committee has just announced some incredibly impressive news: In just 15 days since its opening, the festival has attracted over 1 million visitors, including nearly 40,000 international tourists. This figure once again confirms the festival's immense appeal to both domestic and international visitors. This impressive number demonstrates the festival's ever-increasing attractiveness and solidifies Hwacheon's position as a top winter tourism destination.
Since its inception in 2003, the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Fishing Festival has quickly established itself as one of the largest and most anticipated winter events in South Korea. With its ever-increasing popularity, the festival attracts an average of over one million visitors annually and is gaining growing global recognition. Notably, this year's festival reached the one million visitor mark a day earlier than the previous year, demonstrating the event's continued appeal.
Over 1 million visitors attend the annual Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival in Hwacheon, Gangwon Province.
According to the organizers, this year's festival is expected to last 23 days, until January 28th. The mountainous town of Hwacheon is located 25km south of the inter-Korean border and about 90km northeast of Seoul.
In 2020, the festival was interrupted by unseasonably high temperatures and heavy rain. The next two events were also canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but Hwacheon, a town of only 24,000 people, attracted 1.31 million visitors in 2023 when the festival returned.
Visitors to the Ice Fishing Festival not only get to experience the lively winter atmosphere but also receive discount vouchers for purchasing local products.
The Hwacheon Festival is world-famous as thousands of tourists eagerly participate in catching "sancheoneo" (a species of mountain trout that lives only in very clean freshwater), by casting lines through holes in the ice or catching the fish with their bare hands.
The festival has transformed Hwacheon, a district with only 23,000 residents, into a popular winter destination in South Korea. Despite challenges such as unusually warm winters, heavy rains in 2020, and the Covid-19 pandemic which led to the cancellation of many events in 2021 and 2022, the festival has maintained its reputation as a "million-person festival" for 16 years.
The key to the event's success was its innovative approach and ability to adapt quickly to change.
In addition, visitors can participate in other recreational activities on the glacier such as skiing and ice skating.
For example, in 2016, the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Fishing Festival became the first winter festival in Korea to introduce night fishing, a unique idea that garnered widespread attention.
Beyond the main event – ice fishing for sancheoneo, a species of mountain trout – the festival attracts visitors with a variety of other activities. Every Saturday, the festival features a lantern parade through the streets, reminiscent of the vibrant street performances at Canada's Quebec Winter Festival.
