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Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival slammed by animal rights groups

Published: 08 Jan. 2026, 17:41

KIM MIN-YOUNG
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A person smiles after catching a sancheoneo, or a cherry salmon, living in clean waters at the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival in Hwacheon, Gangwon. [YONHAP]

The Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival, one of Korea’s best-known ice fishing festivals, is facing allegations of animal cruelty, with animal rights groups arguing that live fish are being used as entertainment and mishandled during festival operations.

For Hwacheon, a county in Gangwon, the festival is its largest annual event and a key driver of the local economy, encouraging spending and creating jobs. Drawing more than one million visitors each year, this year's festival is set to run for 23 days from Saturday through Feb. 1.

Attendance has risen steadily, from 1.31 million in 2023 to 1.53 million in 2024 and 1.86 million last year, a figure more than 80 times Hwacheon’s 2025 population of about 22,000, according to the county. The county has also said that more than 100,000 foreign tourists visit annually.

Animal rights groups Donghaemul and Last Chance for Animals held a press conference in front of the Korea Press Center in Jung District, central Seoul, on Wednesday, calling for a boycott of the festival.

The groups said “hundreds of thousands” of sancheoneo, or cherry salmon, are painfully killed and urged organizers to immediately halt hands-on programs that involve live animals.

A cherry salmon at the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival in Hwacheon, Gangwon [YONHAP]

A signature activity at the event is the “barehand fishing” program, for which participants — including families with children and teenagers — grab live fish and throw them out of the water. The groups claimed that the fish suffer severe injuries during the process, and that many die after being stepped on as people scramble to collect them.

The organizations described the festival as a system that “turns life into a tool for amusement.” Citing its own findings, Donghaemul said the cherry salmon used for the festival are not native to the county and claimed that 13 metric tons of fish were collected from Hwacheon Stream after the 2025 festival ended — about 8.3 percent of the fish released.

Donghaemul said the retrieval rate has nearly doubled over the past three years even as the number of fish released has declined. The group further claimed that some fish that survived after the festival were supplied to nearby sashimi restaurants and eateries.