Taean - South Korea's worst oil spill is threatening to enter a bay that is an important winter rest stop for migratory birds, the coastguard and a conservation group said on Monday.
Tens of thousands of volunteers, soldiers and others have battled for 10 days to clean up 10 500 tons of crude oil that spewed from a tanker. The spill then washed up on west coast beaches popular with tourists and blackened a nature reserve.
The coastguard has set up containment fences and dispatched vessels to break up or turn back the spill before it enters Cheonsu Bay, about 150km south-west of Seoul.
The bay is home for about 400 000 migratory birds, representing 300 different species that pass through during the South Korean winter, according to a statement by the Seosan Cheonsu Bay Bird Watching Fair Organisation Committee.
South Korea has declared the west coast Taean region a disaster area and said it would make available 300 billion won in loans to help residents who say they face ruin.
The spill has wiped out fish farms and oyster beds in the region and conservation groups said oil in the seabed will create problems for years to come.
The leak is about a third of the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill of crude oil onto Alaska shores, the costliest on record at $9.5-billion including settlement of claims.