S. Korea Fights to Contain Oil Spill Blackening Coastline

Winds and waves widened South Korea’s massive oil spill along its pristine southern coast Wednesday, suffocating tens of thousands of fish, wiping out residents’ livelihoods, and threatening tourists and resort operators on nearby islands.

About 120 vessels and two helicopters were fighting to contain the slick, caused when the Sea Prince, a Cyprus-registered tanker, began leaking an estimated 700 tons of fuel oil after running aground during a fierce typhoon Sunday.

Korean maritime police said the leak had been stopped and that none of the tanker’s 83,000 tons of crude oil--which causes more damage than fuel--had escaped from cargo tanks.

The typhoon hit the tanker just as workers had unloaded about two-thirds of its cargo of Saudi crude and were trying to move it to a safer port. All but one of the 20 crew members escaped to a nearby island; the chief engineer was missing Wednesday and presumed dead.

Typhoon Faye, Korea’s worst in 37 years, killed 22 people and ripped up rice paddies and railways, causing millions of dollars in damage in the southern Cholla and Pusan areas. Although the storm had abated by Wednesday, Korean television reported that the oil slick had grown to more than 40 miles and was threatening lucrative sea bream, oyster, abalone and seaweed grounds.

The area provides almost all of Korea’s $450 million in annual exports of coastal fishing products--80% destined for Japan. Japanese firms contacted Wednesday said the overall impact would not be significant but that specialty markets could take a major hit.

Supplies of a shellfish delicacy known as tairagi, which sells for $18 a pound and twice that during the New Year season, are likely to be squeezed once the fishing season begins in September, said Mitsuru Mashima of Matsuoka Corp., a marine-products importer in southern Japan.

For some Korean fishermen, however, the spill meant the end of their livelihoods.

“We are finished,” said a grim Sohn Dok Un, 65, who educated his three children on income from his seaweed and fish farm on the island of Sori Do near the spill. “They say it will take at least five years before the oil is cleared from the sea.”

Sohn said the village, on Korea’s southernmost inhabited island, has hauled in about $4.2 million annually from fish farms, making it one of the more affluent areas in the region. But Wednesday the area was covered in black oil.

At the Yosu Fishery Cooperatives building, on the southern tip of Korea’s mainland, official Hong Dong Jin said the sea was choked with hundreds of thousands of dead sea bream floating belly-up. And the slick was threatening to spread to oyster and clam beds, the source for canned exports to the United States and Japan.

The storm and spill dealt a double blow to the auction and fish market in Yosu, where product was so scarce that sales plunged Wednesday to just 10% of normal volume.

“During Typhoon Faye, fishermen withdrew their nets. We were hoping the catch would begin after the typhoon, and now this,” lamented Park No Ju, an auction officer. “It’s like a finishing blow to an already staggering guy.”

Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.