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ReGIonAL RoUnDUP

Seeing is believing in South Korea

nterest in Southern Gold Ltd’s South Kore- and pegged more projects in its own right. companies and with Ausino we can seri-
Ian gold assets took off in late 2019 follow- “We also started to investigate the data- ously lift our drilling rate; the more holes you
ing a series of site visits whereby analysts base and chase up all sorts of opportunities drill, the more things you find,” Mitchell said.
and investors roused to the opportunities in that have come through the Doug Kirwin “Ausino understand what they are deal-
country. connection. This has given us an effective ing with and are the perfect group to come
Southern Gold managing director Simon head start in hitting the ground running,” in and assist us.”
Mitchell said the group visiting South Ko- Mitchell said. As the harsh wintry conditions start to
rea, which included major shareholders of “What has happened with those projects dissipate in South Korea, follow-up deeper
the company, were surprised at the country is that we have discovered epithermal min- drilling at Beopseongpo (0.96m @ 5.7 g/t
itself, but more importantly the technically eralisation in more than one location with a gold from 36.45m) and Deokon (0.15m @
savvy contingent were “blown away” by the small team and a relatively modest budget. 4.59 g/t gold and 708 g/t silver) was being
geological potential. The logical extension of that, by being fully planned.
“What we are uncovering there, and the funded, is being able to drill a lot more. With Meanwhile, the company was also keen
quality of the technical opportunity is sec- a lot more people out on the ground we can to drill at Weolyu South (0.92m @ 13.55 g/t
ond to none. That is why people like Terry put the exploration play on steroids and re- gold and 447 g/t silver from scout drilling)
[Grammer] want to be involved; they can ally hit it hard.” and Neungju (31.8 g/t gold and 6.6 g/t silver
see straight away that we’re onto something The recruitment of private Australian drill- from a sub-crop sample) this year.
pretty special there,” Mitchell said. ing company Ausino will aid in Southern “We have this unique window at the mo-
Mitchell spoke to Paydirt following Gold’s aggressive approach to exploration ment and no competitors in country and we
Southern Gold’s $10 million institutional initially at the high-grade gold-silver discov- have all the right technical crew. We really
placement at an issue price of 14c/share. eries at Beopseongpo, Weolyu South, Ne- have to get our teeth into it. The gold price is
London investment group Metal Tiger plc, ungju and Golden Surprise, Deokon. good for sentiment, but really it is about the
of which award-winning explorer Grammer Although South Korea has a proud his- fact that we are starting to get some runs on
is a non-executive director, came in heavy tory of manufacturing drill rigs, there are the board in terms of actually understand-
on the placement with $3.3 million and now few groups equipped to execute mineral ing what is going on in the country,” Mitchell
holds 14.9% of Southern Gold. exploration drilling like Ausino. said.
Grammer joins Southern Gold as a direc- Therefore, with Ausino on board, South- “We have a very full pipeline of things to
tor, while Douglas Kirwin comes on board ern Gold will look to ramp-up drilling efforts investigate. We have only really investigat-
as a non-executive director after serving from 4,000m to 15,000m a year. ed the first dozen or so of over 100 targets
the company in a technical advisory capac- Ausino has been established in China for in our schedule.”
ity previously. the best part of 15 years and had to over- In the next three months, Mitchell hopes
Kirwin has been instrumental in helping come similar issues to those Southern Gold to have a second rig running and two pro-
Southern Gold expand in South Korea in is currently experiencing in South Korea. jects being drilled in parallel in south-west
the past 18 months. “South Korea doesn’t have a big explora- South Korea where there is potential to un-
Mitchell said the company had lifted its tion business; we are really the only west- earth world-class epithermal precious met-
tempo in South Korea during the period and ern group that is seriously active there. It als deposits.
had doubled its field teams on the ground can be quite hard to attract quality drilling “When we talk about the discoveries in

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