Organizers of the 2020 Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival, a world-famous winter event now under way in the Gangwon Province town, northeast of Seoul, said Thursday that they have been making all-out efforts to ensure the safety of Korean and foreign visitors, particularly in the face of the new coronavirus outbreak.
The annual festival hosted by Hwacheon, a remote mountain town close to the inter-Korean border and about 120 kilometers northeast of Seoul, has made headlines worldwide, with thousands of tourists trying to catch “sancheoneo,” a species of mountain trout, through holes in a vast frozen river and taking part in bare-hand fishing, sledding, ice soccer and other events.
This year’s sancheoneo festival was originally scheduled to kick off on Jan. 4 but had been postponed twice due to unseasonably warm weather and insufficient formation of ice on the main ice fishing venue.
Thanks to the return of the winter cold, the festival finally opened on Jan. 27, having since drawn a stream of tourists to Hwacheon’s festival sites.
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