The Hook

A Hole In The Ice.
A World Beneath
The Frost.

Picture this: a frozen lake in Hongcheon, an hour’s drive from Seoul. The team saws a neat triangle through thick ice and lifts the block clear. One by one, divers descend through the opening into water so still and clear it feels like another planet. Above, the ice glows pale blue. Below, total silence. Afterward, everyone gathers for a barbecue – on top of the frozen lake.

This is ice diving, and it is one of the most unforgettable things you can do with a tank on your back. We have hosted divers who flew in from Taiwan – a country with no winter – specifically to experience Korean ice diving. The demand says everything: this is a bucket-list dive, and Korea is one of the best places to do it.

The Problem

Ice Diving Is Not
A Day Trip You
Improvise

Diving under ice means diving under a solid ceiling. There is one way out – the hole you cut – and the water sits near freezing. This is a genuine overhead environment, and it demands proper preparation, the right equipment, and a trained team. It is exhilarating precisely because it is taken seriously.

That is why ice diving has firm prerequisites: you must be at least 18 years old and hold an Advanced Open Water certification or higher, with dry-suit competence. Before anyone touches the ice, our visiting teams complete a dry-suit orientation in a heated pool. Only then do we travel to the lake, where each diver practises tender and safety-diver roles, the one-third gas rule, and controlled buoyancy under supervision.

The Experience

Three Dives, One
Unforgettable Day

A typical NB Divers ice programme follows the PADI Ice Diver specialty structure across three training dives. On the first, you learn to select and prepare an ice site, perform the surface tender role, act as a safety diver, hold neutral buoyancy under the ice, and apply the one-third gas-management rule. The second dive sharpens buoyancy and gas discipline. By the third, you are planning, organising, and conducting the dive yourself – including the all-important closing procedures, like properly securing the ice hole.

Between dives, you warm up, share hot food, and feel the particular camaraderie that only cold-water diving creates. There is nothing quite like surfacing through a hole in the ice to the cheers of your team. Then the barbecue starts.

Short, intense, and beautiful – ice dives are not measured in bottom time. They are measured in the stories you will tell for years.

Korea & Ice Diving

Why Hongcheon Is
The Place To
Do It

Korea’s cold winters freeze inland lakes solid, and Hongcheon – just an hour from Seoul – has become a home for ice diving. Its proximity makes it possible to combine a heated-pool dry-suit orientation in the city with real ice diving the very next morning. For divers based in Seoul, or visiting from warmer countries, it is one of the most accessible true ice-diving experiences in Asia.

Ice diving is the natural next step after building cold-water skill in the East Sea and earning your Advanced and Dry Suit certifications. NB Divers runs these programmes in English and Korean, guiding you from your first cold-water dive to standing on a frozen lake. Begin the journey here.

Learn right, enjoy forever. The ice is waiting – and it is more beautiful than you imagine.