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The biggest oil spill in South Korea’s history reached the country’s scenic and environmentally sensitive Western beaches yesterday as strong winds and high waves hampered efforts to prevent the disaster spreading.

About 70 boats and six helicopters were sent to the area to help the clean-up as hundreds of soldiers, coast guards, police and local residents used buckets to remove dense crude oil from Mallipo, one of South Korea’s best-known and most popular beaches.

Residents said the oil could be smelt more than half a mile inland, as the slick contaminated four miles of shoreline.

“This is an enormous accident … the smell is so strong that it causes a headache,” said Lee Hee-yol, a village leader at Mallipo. “We’ve asked the government to declare this region as a disaster zone.”

The area, about 95 miles south-west of the capital, Seoul, is also the site of farms that produce abalone, seaweed, clams and sea cucumbers and the spill is likely to affect at least 4,000 fishermen. It is also home to a national maritime park and is an important sanctuary for migrating birds, including snipe, mallards and great crested grebes.
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The disaster occurred on Friday, when a barge collided with the supertanker Hebei Spirit about seven miles from shore, puncturing the hull and sending more than 10,000 tons of oil gushing into the sea.

The spill is twice as big as the country’s previous largest in 1995 and a quarter of the size of the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1989.

“It’s hopeless,” said Lee Pyong-gook, of the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement. “It’s a sea of oil.”

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