The Hwacheon Ice Festival

During the two hour bus ride to Hwacheon, I realized that getting outside of Seoul to participate in some of the culture festivals of the smaller towns is one of my absolute favorite things to do in Korea.  My last time outside of the city was for the Andong Maskdance Festival with Holly and Kyla.  This time, 8 of my foreign friends and I headed out to freeze ourselves with the avid fish fans of Korea.

I didn't take my camera with me, I wanted to travel light this time, but I was snapping away with my iPod camera.  So, here's a mediocre quality photo tour of our own tour of Hwacheon the Ice Festival!

While I couldn't tell much of a difference, this was my first hint that there was something special about this place.

I loved these decorative fish from the first moment I saw one.  How beautiful and quirky are they?  I kept my eyes peeled for one I could take home with me, but they all seemed to be in use, and I never saw any for sale.

I got pretty jealous of the personality this town has.

 Finally in at the festival, we were amused to see that there was a designated ice fishing area for foreigners.  We reasoned it was to give the foreigners a better chance with the fish without the experienced Koreans hooking them all.

Have you ever had chestnuts?  I sing about them every Christmas season, but I'd never eaten one until coming to Korea where they're a popular street food snack.  At the festival, one of the salesmen stopped me.  "Oh, oh.  Wait a moment.  So beautiful.  Here."  Ha!  Sure, I'll accept your compliment and the free sample.  Even when they aren't attached to flattery, I think chestnuts are pretty good.

Never had I ever been in an ice tunnel.  I'm a long way from Atlanta, eh?

Out on the ice, there were all kinds of ice vehicles.  This one's an ice bike with the front wheel removed so it can slide easier.

This one's some snow mobile... thing.  (Felicia, can you help me find a name for it?)  And, yes, that's a man with a giant blue bear head driving it.  Here's a short video clip of the craziness!  Elsewhere on the ice were bumper tubes, small scooters you maneuvered with ice picks, and mini 4-Wheelers all designed to be mobile on the ice.  I never knew they made such things!

I got to hang out in an ice maze before ever having been in a traditional American corn maze.  I just think that's slightly ironic.

Snowmen!

Here are the Koreans ice fishing.  They've carved out holes in the ice for them to drop their fishing hooks into.  Those are the poles in the top right of the photo.  I think the net-like things are to help them grab the fish on its way out of the hole.  And, as you can see in the lower pictures, this makes for an excellent date, but you gotta be careful not to fall in.

Here is the much less exciting foreigner section of the ice fishing.

Well, who knew, there's another kind of ice fishing!  It involves getting thigh deep in icy water wearing only a t-shirt and gym shorts while you reach down and catch river trout with your bare hands.  I repeat: In Freezing Water.

You have your shirt tucked into your shorts so that, when you do catch a fish, you can slip it into your shirt where it's safe and out of the way while you use your free hands to catch more fish.  This all sounded absolutely ludicrous to me, and I watched this first round of fishing in riveted disbelief.

We who are about to freeze salute you!

I find it totally hilarious (after the fact), so I'm going to let you in on my thought process as I watched all this.  First, I need to tell you that, long before any of this started going on, Corey had been telling us about his first time at a Korean ice festival.  He told us about the horror of freezing your toes off and the disgusting feeling of having live, wriggling fish up against your tummy.  All I could say was, "Why in the world would you ever do that?"  When I turned to tell him this, however, I saw that he was far away at the sign up counter.  He listed himself and his fiancee Melissa on the roster for the 2:00 fishing.  I kept expressing my disbelief to my friends next to me, but one by one, they followed to the sign up counter.  Eventually, I was the only one not signed up.  I was reasoning with everyone that someone needed to be the photographer, right?  It made perfect sense for me to not participate in this craziness.  Not long after saying that, though, I realized that I didn't want to be the only one not sharing in this wild story.  So, against my better judgement, I signed up.
So, watching this 1:00 fishing session was pretty significant.  I was going to see what it was all about, what techniques the people were using, and was it really as bad as I thought.  Melissa and I stood together and shared our commentary which went something like this:

"Oh my gosh, look at how freezing they must be!  They're only wearing shorts and a t-shirt?!  Oh gosh, they're getting all wet.  We'll definitely have to take off all our clothes when we change to make sure none of it gets wet.  Woah, wait.  All our clothes?  Um... even our bras?  Wooooah snap, our bras?!?  Are you going to wear yours?  I don't want to wear mine!  What if it gets wet?  And what if I get fish slime on it?  Who wants to wear fish slime for the rest of the day?  Oh dang, oh dang.  No bra.  But, um, gosh, it sure is cold there in the icy water!  This is not going to end well, is it?"

Really, I think it's so funny how my focus completely changed in the span of two minutes. When I agreed to go on this trip, I'd had no idea wading around in the icy water was even a possibility, but I really wished I'd been prepared like the Korean girls there who were definitely wearing something under their t-shirts.

TMI?  Maybe.  But hilarious?  I hope you think so.

Here you can see some of the fellas with their fish.

Well, here's what happened when it was our turn for the fishing.  We ladies (seven of us foreigners) headed into the girls' locker room and discretely stripped amid all the Koreans who were able to keep their underwears on.  My friend Kaylee even had one of the Korean ladies tell her that she needed to keep her bra on. (Sorry, ma'am, but we really, really can't do that.)  I'm not sure which of us had this idea, but when we went to put on our t-shirts, we saw that there was very large and convenient screen print on the back.  We decided to risk looking like idiots to preserve our modesty and wore our shirts backwards with the design on our fronts.  Walking out of the locker room into the large group of Koreans who knew what they were doing was slightly humiliating, and explaining our wacky team uniforms to our guy friends was just weird, but, by this time, I was starting to refocus on the frigid temperatures outside.

Holly and I clung to each other in the snow as we made our way to the pool.  We got out onto the ledge surrounding the water and sat down when instructed.  We'd already used pretty colorful language to describe our predicament out in the ice while we were waiting, so when we finally hopped into the water, all I had left was undignified screams.  All that pep talk about taking hold of this experience the likes of Obama would never get to enjoy melted away as my toes started to go numb.

Surprisingly, after the initial shock subsided, and that only took a few moments, my mind went into hyper competition mode.  Amid the intermittent squeals of pain and unbelief, I had become a hunter, and my sights were dead set on those fishes.  I was going to catch one, dang it, and I did not want to get out of that water until I had the satisfaction of getting one of those slimy creatures down my shirt.  (Ha!  I never thought I'd say a sentence like that!)  I grabbed, grazed, and missed many times, I even followed the merciful Korean man's nod in the direction of the best place to catch the fish, but, alas and to my utter shame and dismay, I never was able to wrap my hands around one of those fishes.  Bummed but not embarrassed (I had stayed in the water longer than all my friends), I was helped out of the pool by smiling Korean men at the water's edge.  I shuffled toward the warming up hut in floppy sandals and watched my feet like a hawk to make sure I didn't step on anything I couldn't feel through the numbness.

In the warming up hut my friends were already sitting in steaming water pools.  Corey had caught two fish, and Katie had caught one.  They let me take pictures with their fish.


After cleaning up and dressing again, one of the festival staff members passed some extra fish to us.  We ended up with 14 trout and headed out to find a place where we could get them prepared for eating.

Sashimi style was one option, for those who like their fish raw.

We decided to go with cooked fish.  This man killed and prepared our 14 fish for a small fee (less than a dollar per fish, I believe).

After waiting about 15 minutes per fish, we opened up the foil and dug in with wooden chopsticks.  Oh guys, the fish was delicious!  It was some of the most flavorful fish I've ever had in my life, and it's definitely my favorite from what I can remember ever eating.

This one turned out pretty beautifully, so we named him before we ate him.  As normal people do, you know.

Here's a little Korean folklore for you, by the way, before we head out of the festival.

After eating our delicious fish, we made our way back to the center of town to catch a bus back to Seoul.  The festival mascot said gave us a happy farewell.

Looks like a good time was had by all.

This was one of the ice sculptures near the entrance.  It's pretty incredible what you can do with this stuff, don't you think?

Closer to town, we passed this street food stand.  These fish are like fried waffle batter filled with sweet bean paste or with custard.  I bought 3 of the custard fishes for about 80 cents.

Ah, these pretty decorations still looked lovely in the dim light, and they were a fanciful addition to our walk back to the bust station.  It had been a great day.  The weather had been gentle, the fishing had been a blast, and hanging with my friends outside of Seoul was a wonderful way to spend the weekend.  I'm really glad I went.