Snow & Ski Festivals Abound

Fascinating winter fetes to attract S.E. Asia and Russian Far East tourists

Foreign tourists flock to enjoy winter sports at Fun Ski and Snow Festival held at a number of winter resorts in the country from Dec.15 to March 8 including Yongpyong, Muju and High 1 resorts staged by the Korea Tourism Organization(KTO). KTO said the winter festival will held 15 times during the event period and the winter sports events for foreign skiers will be held during the period when not many domestic skiers gather at the resorts so that foreign visitors would be able to enjoy a special service prepared for them by the resorts with the help of KTO, the tourism promotion agency said.
Foreign tourists, mostly from southeast Asian countries, where weather is warm year round come to the resorts in Korea for four-day ski-tourism schedules. The schedules include ski lessons by experts, lessons on snowboard, amateur ski races, and snow board races, traditional performing art and musical concert by popular Korean singers.
Those events have become extremely so popular to the foreign tourists that many of them return to the resorts every year as they have a discount promotion program, the presentation of awards for various events with prizes attached, ski camp for youths, Korean traditional garment display, photo sessions with popular Korean performers and other events that are prepared to please and convenience of the foreign tourists at the winter resorts. Manager Woo Byung-hee of the event marketing team of KTO, said the ski festival has been attracting a great number of foreign tourists as it includes a ski lesson and events for families, in fact deluxe tourist program, different from the usual winter tourist program package tours. Some 1,700 foreign tourists flocked to the festival during December last year, mostly from southeast Asia to enjoy beautiful snow scenes for the first time in their lives , an experience they will never forget. The visitor number was up some 60 percent from the previous year, the manager said.













KTO has been promoting the winter snow tourism package tours in southeast Asian countries, knowing that they have a number of competitive edges against Japan and China in terms of price and quality; Japanese tours are expensive while China's tourism facilities are not up to international standards, Woo said.
This year, KTO's tourism promotion efforts have been extended to the Russian Far East region in cooperation with the High 1 Ski Resort in Gangwon Province offering the Ru-Ski special package tour program for"High 1 Go-Go Ski Festival to attract Russian tourists.
To celebrate the Lunar New Year, the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) is organizing various traditional cultural events. The event will be held at the KTO Tourist Information Center (TIC) and will run for 7 days from January 21, 2009 (Wednesday) to January 27, 2009 (Tuesday). It is open to all visitors to the TIC.
During this period, guides will give detailed introductions to Korea's traditional folk games, such as yut (a board game played by tossing four sticks into the air), jegi (kicking a shuttlecock), tuho (arrow throwing), paeng-i (top spinning), and sangmo (hat spinning). Visitors will then be able to try out these games. In addition visitors can try on hanbok (Korean traditional dress) and experience hanji making (Korean traditional paper). All of these enjoyable events will be free of charge.
Visitors to the TIC during this period will be able to find out more information about Lunar New Year cultural events and performances at the theatre and Hallyu Hall.
KTO began to fix tourism packages during the winter aimed at tourists from southeast Asian countries with no cold seasons and no snow so that they can enjoy winter sports, especially, skiing, skiing lessons and ski races, along with events for them to experience Korean traditional culture. KTO extended its foreign tourism promotion programs to the Russian Far East to lure Russians who want to enjoy skiing, especially and they don't have very good winter sports facilities in the Russian Far East. nw

Russian tourists from the Russian Far East enjoy skiing and snow board riding at a ski resort in Gangwon Province.