Australian gold miner, Southern Gold, reports that the novel use of cave explorers has been employed to initiate exploration on a second gold-silver project in South Korea, Weolyu South, located about 150 km southeast of the capital Seoul. A small team of South Korean cave explorers was engaged to gain access to the bottom of a small shaft within an artisanal scale mine at Weolyu South (approximately 20 m below surface). This enabled the exploration team to confirm, in a qualitative fashion, the target of the old mine workings.
The mine workings do not appear on any government maps or records. Adjacent to the mine workings are waste heaps that contain banded epithermal quartz vein fragments. It has now been confirmed that an approximately 1 m wide zone including banded and highly oxidized epithermal quartz vein has been observed in the mine wall at the bottom of the shaft. It is important to note that the quartz vein appears to be in-situ, augmenting the quality of the drill target.
On 18 July 2016 Southern Gold announced the commencement of diamond drilling at its first South Korean exploration target, Kochang. Progress since has been good, with two drill holes completed for 450.8 m of core and with two drill holes in the current campaign still to be completed.
Qualitative results from the second drill hole have been encouraging, with a zone of silicified sulphidic breccia across 1m down hole and adjacent, variably altered, hanging wall with multiple narrow quartz veins across 4 m width downhole.
Because this drill program is receiving funding support from Korean Resources Corporation (KORES), all four drill holes need to be completed, logged and processed before sample dispatch. Assay results from this initial four hole programme are therefore expected in mid-September.
Southern Gold is a successful gold explorer and producer listed on the ASX. Its main focus is its Bulong gold project located 30 km east of the world renowned gold district of Kalgoorlie (WA) with the flagship Cannon gold mine projected to produce around 50,000 oz gold.
Mining at Cannon has commenced with Metals X Ltd financing and developing the deposit under a 50/50 profit share arrangement. Metals X is responsible for all mining, haulage and processing activities with this mandate recently expanded to incorporate the commercial terms of a larger open pit development.
In addition to its cornerstone position in Kalgoorlie, Southern Gold has recently acquired a portfolio of high grade gold projects in South Korea. These projects are a mix of decommissioned gold mines with orogenic gold mineralisation and greenfield epithermal gold targets. The aim is to move one or more of the orogenic gold mines into production in the medium term as well as test for world-class epithermal gold deposits.
