Korea's Oil Spill Still Spreading    • Share   • Read Later KIM
JAE-HWAN / AFP / Getty Images  Residents clean up a beach slick
with oil on Sunday, Dec. 9, following South Korea's worst-ever
oil spill  For Choi Yeyong, an environmentalist with Friends of
the Earth Korea, it was the worst kind of déjà vu. "When I
reached the tanker and saw the holes, it felt like the spill 12
years ago," recalls Choi, who says he was nearly brought to
tears when he surveyed South Korea's worst-ever oil spill last
Saturday on the country's west coast. In 1995, the Korean tanker
Sea Prince ran aground during a typhoon, spilling 5,000 tons of
oil on the southern coast. The slick caused an estimated $100
million in damage and took five months to clean up. "But this
time," says Choi, "[the spill] is twice as large."  The latest
spill occurred on the morning of Dec. 7, when a barge owned by
Samsung Heavy Industries smashed into the Hong Kong-registered
supertanker Hebei Spirit about five miles (8km) off the coast
and some 93 miles (