HWACHEON, South Korea, Jan. 26 (Yonhap) -- The number of foreigners who visited a local ice fishing festival hit the 100,000 mark as of Thursday, organizers said Friday, expecting the number to reach a record high this year, helped by the boom in visitors for the Winter Olympics, which will be held in nearby PyeongChang early next month.
As many as 109,000 foreign tourists visited the 2018 Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival, which opened on Jan. 6 for a 23-day run, they said, forecasting the number of visitors to surpass 110,400 by Jan. 28.
They attributed the rising number of foreign visitors to the PyeongChang Olympics boom.
The Feb. 9-25 PyeongChang Games will be the first Winter Olympics hosted by South Korea and the first Olympics in the country since the 1988 Seoul Summer Games.
PyeongChang 2018 will be the largest ever Winter Olympics, with a record 102 gold medals at stake in seven sports across 15 disciplines. Some 6,500 athletes and officials from about 95 nations are expected to participate in the quadrennial event.
The organizers said they have launched aggressive marketing activities abroad over the past year to attract tourists from China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.
A group of Kuwaiti tourists also visited recently in a group package tour, aside from a growing number of Americans and Europeans, organizers said.
A shuttle runs between the festival venue in Hwacheon, Gangwon Province, and bustling areas in Seoul, including Hongdae, Myeongdong and Dongdaemun.
The festival venue features a duty free shop and facilities where foreign tourists can roast fish.
"We will try our best to reinforce a variety of content and improve the quality of the festival so Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival can grow into an event that warrants the reputation of a global festival," Choi Moon-soon, governor of Gangwon Province, said.
The Culture Ministry chose the ice fish festival as the nation's best festival in 2010. Launched in 2003, Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival has grown to become one of the world's four major winter festivals, along with China's Ice and Snow World, Japan's Sapporo Snow Festival and Canada's Winter Carnival.
The program "Catch Sancheoneo With Your Bare Hands" has been one of the biggest contributors to the festival's growing global profile. Sancheoneo is a type of mountain trout.
The festival began to welcome more than 1 million tourists in 2006, when it attracted 1.03 million people. By 2016, the number had risen to 1.55 million.
The festival features various outdoor activities, including barehanded fishing, a sled contest, football on ice, a meeting with Santa Claus from Finland and the world's biggest ice carving square.
Organizers have stocked fishing sites with tons of trout.
The total number of visitors to Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival rose to 1.55 million last from 1 million in 2006, 1.33 million in 2010 and 1.5 million in 2015.
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