An aerial view of Mt. Saorak in Gangwon Province, in the east coast. (photos: Gangwon-do)

Gangwon Province has a number of major tourism programs to make this fall’s Tourism Week (Sept. 25-Oct. 5) more meaningful and exciting.

The tour courses in the programs will be connected to the four major lakes around Chuncheon, the Soyang Dam, the biggest of them all in the province with beautiful sceneries that tourists would regret missing with the main theme for the tour programs being “family, friends, fellow office workers in their 20s to 40s, happy in the water together.”

One course includes Nami Island, Mulleway, Sasang Ground, the Animation Museum, and the Provincial Floral Forest for a daily tour linking Chuncheon, Yangu, and Hwacheon in a one-night-two-day tour.

On the first day, the course starts with Mulleway, the Sasang Ground, the Animation Museum, and the Provincial Floral Forest and the second-day tour starts with the Park Soo-keun Museum in Yangu, Sonsa Museum, the Lee Hae-in Poetry and Literature Hall. The tour course continues on to the Hwacheon Folk Art Museum, Carp Island, and the World Peace Bell Park, all in Yangu.

A 20 percent discount will be given at Canoe, City Tour, the Watercolor World Lake, Wind-powered Pension, and others. The entertainment programs available at those locations include a musical Hello! Rock’n Roll concert, Dragon Boat Racing, Buskers, and Whisper, a performance, among others.

There also are festivals and events for the tourists to attend at those places, including the Mulleway Festival at Four Lakes in Gangwon-do 2014 scheduled for Sept. 25-Oct. 5 at Uiam Lake, Chuncheon Lake, Paro Lake, and Soyang Lake. The tourists can try canoeing, watching the Dragon Boat Race and Canoe Slalom, and more.

Also to be held is the Chuncheon Chicken, Ribs and Noodle Festival to take place from Sept. 23-28 in front of the Chuncheon Railroad Station, which is made up of Local Foods Cooking Festival, the Noodle Eating Race, and cooking the noodles.

The tourism authorities of the Gangwon provincial administration has been providing language training to drivers of some 8,000 taxis in Gangwon Province from August this year so that they would be able to converse in seven languages in simple ways.

The provincial administration has taken measures so that shuttle buses can be operated from Seoul to 12 locations in the province where festivals are to take place from July 2014 to February 2015. Bus charges will be 5,000 won for round-trip and interpreters will be assigned to the buses to help foreign tourists. The shuttle buses to the Gangneung Dano Festival in Gangneung have been test-operated by around 200 people participating. 

A view of the Daegwallyong Sheep Pasture on Mt. Daegwallyong in Gangwon Province.

The tourism authorities trained around 310 volunteer tourist guides on a weekly basis and will assign them to important tourist sites inside the province such as the locations where festivals are staged from September. They also will launch a campaign for kind, clean, orderly, and trustworthy tourism at the tourism sites in the province, especially aimed at rooting out overcharging and attracting customers by the tourism related businesses such as restaurants and hotels.

A scene of a buckwheat farm in Bongpyeong, Gangwon Province.

In order to make the tourism public relations system orderly, the provincial administration chose to have the 37 tourism guide offices operated in an orderly fashion, check up on tourism facilities including public relations materials during September, and assign 175 tour guides, and around 100 tour interpreters and volunteer service people to important tourism sites in the province at all times.

They will make sure that placards and other similar things to welcome the visiting tourists are hung in the right places around the tourism sites, at entrances of shopping areas and tourism facilities so that the tourists can feel the warmth of Tourism Week.

The Welcome to Gangwon Promotion Committee in cooperation with regional committees will monitor the business firms participating in the Tourism Week activities.  

An aerial view of the Alpensia Resort in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province, part of the venues for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.