300,000 Volunteers Have Gone to Taean

More than 300,000 volunteers will have gone to Taean, South Chungcheong Province, by this weekend in an effort to clean the oil slick on the beach there. Taean-gun announced yesterday that around 28,300 volunteers came to the county and that a whopping 284,800 volunteers had come to the country since the beginning of the cleanup process starting December 8. The accumulated figure is 4.5 times larger than the population of Taean-gun, whose population reached 62,729 at the end of November.

According to Taean-gun, considering that about 36,000 volunteers visited the county last Sunday (December 15), the cumulative number of volunteers is expected to exceed 300,000 today.

Many college students have participated in cleanup work after finishing their final exams for the term. College students from Korea University, Wonkwang University, Kyung Hee University, Korea National University of Education, Chungbuk National University, Dongshin University, and Halla University came to Taean-gun to clean the beach yesterday.

Some workers participated in the cleanup work instead of having a year-end party.

Yoo Je-seon, manager of a steel mill in Pohang of Dongkuk Steel Mill, visited Taean-gun along with 100 employees and said, “Lots of employees said yes when I proposed to do some meaningful work helping to clean up the oil spill instead of having a year-end party.”

mhjee@donga.com