A lady poses with fish on the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Competition in Hwacheon County, Gangwon Province, Jan. 11, 2025. Newsis
A world-famous annual ice fishing pageant kicked off Saturday in a distant mountain city within the northeastern province of Gangwon, providing weeks of ice fishing and seasonal actions.
The 2026 Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Competition will run by Feb. 1 in Hwacheon, simply 25 kilometers south of the inter-Korean border and about 90 km northeast of Seoul.
“Sancheoneo” is a species of trout recognized to reside solely in very clear recent water.
Guests from all around the nation arrived on the 300,000-square-meter pageant floor — roughly the scale of round 40 soccer pitches — from early morning.
“(We) will do our greatest to make sure security and in order that the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Competition can turn out to be a winter pageant loved by everybody all over the world past the Republic of Korea,” Hwacheon Gov. Choi Moon-soon mentioned on the opening ceremony.
This yr’s pageant is anticipated to draw greater than 100,000 international guests, turning Hwacheon, with a inhabitants of twenty-two,370, into a world wintertime pageant metropolis.
Launched in 2003, the occasion was chosen because the nation’s greatest pageant by the tradition ministry in 2010 and had drawn greater than 1 million guests for 13 straight years, from 2006 to 2019.
Final yr’s occasion attracted over 1.86 million guests, surpassing the earlier report of 1.84 million set in 2019. Among the many attendees, 122,000 had been international guests — considerably larger than the 85,000 recorded the earlier yr.
The annual winter pageant has beforehand made headlines worldwide, with hundreds of vacationers making an attempt to fish for sancheoneo by holes lower into the floor of an enormous frozen river and collaborating in bare-hand fishing, sledding, ice soccer and different occasions.
The fishing grounds may also be open at night time and there will likely be foreigner-only fishing and resting areas.
Organizers say catching sancheoneo with naked arms is an occasion that may solely be skilled in Hwacheon.
Different hands-on actions that permit guests to totally benefit from the snow and ice this yr will embrace sledding on a 40-meter slope and on a 60-meter part of a frozen river, driving a family-friendly “ice bobsleigh” made by the Hwacheon County Workplace down a spiral-shaped tube, curling and determine skating.
The Seohwasan Multipurpose Indoor Plaza, one other key venue of the pageant, will function a miniature model of the Harbin Ice and Snow World, a world-renowned ice and snow pageant, whereas about 30 ice lantern makers from Harbin will showcase the top of ice artwork on the Indoor Ice Sculpture Plaza.
The dazzling snow sculptures across the Eolgomi Fortress will likely be paying homage to the large-scale sculptures on the Sapporo Snow Competition in Japan. The fortress may also function the Santa Submit Workplace, a direct reproduction of the Santa Submit Workplace in Santa Claus Village, Finland.
The night time pageant held each weekend on Seondeung Road, which options a big show of handcrafted sancheoneo lanterns and LED lights, will likely be impressed by the Winter Carnival held in Quebec, Canada.
