GANGWON-DO < invest Korea

According to Yonhap News,

(HWACHEON=Yonhap News) 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.



hdh@yna.co.kr

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