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S. Korea Oil Spill Hurts Fish Farms, Restaurants

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By JIN-MAN LEE, The Associated Press

Published: December 9, 2007

MALLIPO BEACH, South Korea - Thick, smelly crude oil washed up on an 11-mile stretch of scenic coastline Saturday, blackening seagulls and threatening fish farms as South Korea's Coast Guard struggled to contain the country's largest oil spill.

Residents and emergency workers used buckets to try to remove the dense oil carried by strong winds and currents to the country's western coast.

Nearly 2,200 troops, police and residents were engaged in cleanup efforts at Mallipo, one of South Korea's best-known beaches and an important rest stop for migrating birds.

Tides of dark sea water crashed ashore, while the odor reached areas a half-mile away.

The Coast Guard dispatched 62 ships and five helicopters to battle the spill. It said the area of shoreline affected by the disaster had more than doubled by Saturday evening, from four miles earlier in the day.

A Hong Kong-registered supertanker was slammed early Friday by a Samsung Corp. barge in rough seas and 66,000 barrels of crude gushed into the ocean. It was more than twice as much as leaked from South Korea's worst previous spill in 1995.

Cho Yoo-soon, who runs a raw fish restaurant at Mallipo beach, 95 miles southwest of Seoul, said the situation was overwhelming. She said restaurants in the area were closing, and she could not pump fresh sea water into her tanks.

"Without fresh seawater, the fish will start going bad after a week," she said. "We can't even walk around here because the entire beach is covered with oil."

The affected areas are home to 181 maritime farms that produce abalone, brown seaweed, littleneck clams and sea cucumbers, said Lee Seung-yop, an official with Taean county, which includes the beach. Sea farmers in the areas number about 4,000, he said.

"A lot of damage is feared to these farms, although we don't have an estimate yet," Lee said.

The Coast Guard said it was unclear how many days the cleanup operation would take.

The size of the leak reported by the authorities is about one-fourth that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

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