This archive is a detailed record of an oil spill of 10,900 tons after a tanker collision off the Taean Peninsula of the Republic of Korea on December 7, 2007 and the recovery from the oil spill.



Although oil spills are an universal event, the Taean oil spill is distinguished in the number of people who voluntarily participated in its recovery process. Upon the accident, people from all across South Korea rushed to the site and participated in the cleaning-up process, which lasted for seven months. The total number of volunteers taking part in the effort to remove the oil slick along the coast of Taean reached 1.23 million. Efforts for the environmental and social recovery of the area continued after the oil spill cleanup, and the legal process for paying out compensation for damage was completed in 2019.



This archive is noticeable in terms of the volume of component documents and its temporal comprehensiveness covering the entire process of an oil spill from the occurrence of a spill through the cleanup to the recovery process. If inscribed, this archive will be the first example of documentation on an oil spill that is represented on the Memory of the World Register.



Comprised of 222,129 materials on the massive recovery effort by countless volunteers, the compensation procedures, and the establishment of effective countermeasures in various forms such as hardcopies, electronic files, photographs, videos, publications, and oral records, this archive is important heritage for all humanity.