SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A world-famous annual ice fishing festival kicked off Saturday in a remote mountain town in the northeastern province of Gangwon, offering weeks of ice fishing and seasonal activities.

The 2026 Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival will run through Feb. 1 in Hwacheon, just 25 kilometers south of the inter-Korean border and about 90 km northeast of Seoul.

"Sancheoneo" is a species of trout known to live only in very clean fresh water.

Visitors from all over the nation arrived at the 300,000-square-meter festival ground -- roughly the size of around 40 football pitches -- from early morning.

"(We) will do our best to ensure safety and so that the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival can become a winter festival enjoyed by everyone around the world beyond the Republic of Korea," Hwacheon Gov. Choi Moon-soon said at the opening ceremony.

This year's festival is expected to attract more than 100,000 foreign visitors, turning Hwacheon, with a population of 22,370, into a global wintertime festival city.

Launched in 2003, the event was chosen as the nation's best festival by the culture ministry in 2010 and had drawn more than 1 million visitors for 13 straight years, from 2006 to 2019.

Last year's event attracted over 1.86 million visitors, surpassing the previous record of 1.84 million set in 2019. Among the attendees, 122,000 were foreign visitors -- significantly higher than the 85,000 recorded the previous year.

The annual winter festival has previously made headlines worldwide, with thousands of tourists trying to fish for sancheoneo through holes cut into the surface of a vast frozen river and taking part in bare-hand fishing, sledding, ice soccer and other events.

Other hands-on activities that allow visitors to fully enjoy the snow and ice this year will include sledding on a 40-meter slope and on a 60-meter section of a frozen river, riding a family-friendly "ice bobsleigh" made by the Hwacheon County Office down a spiral-shaped tube, curling and figure skating.

The Seohwasan Multipurpose Indoor Plaza, another key venue of the festival, will feature a miniature version of the Harbin Ice and Snow World, a world-renowned ice and snow festival, while about 30 ice lantern makers from Harbin will showcase the pinnacle of ice art at the Indoor Ice Sculpture Plaza.

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