Southern Gold Ltd (ASX: SAU) announced that high-grade gold assays and multiple vein zones have been identified at its Neungju project in South Korea.
The company reported that the new high-grade outcrop and float assays received from the June 2019 field program at Neungju returned a peak of 31.8g/t gold and 6.6g/t silver in subcrop and 13.4g/t gold and 13.1g/t silver in float.
SAU said that five epithermal veined zones were identified, ranging from 2m-100m wide with interpreted combined strike continuity of 1km.
The company announced that a maiden diamond drilling will commence as soon as practicable.
Neungju project
The Neungju project in South Korea is within granted exploration license Neungju33 held by Southern Gold. The project is located approximately 280km south of Seoul in the Yeongdong Province and approximately 180km SSW of the major city of Daejeon.
Neungju displays the typical geological and structural complexity seen in highly prospective back-arc extensional basin-hosted volcano-plutonic sequences, a similar setting to the Company’s Weolyu, Deokon Beopseongpo and Hampyeong project areas in South Korea.
The 2019 field program
The 2019 field program by SAU was a detailed field mapping and sampling exercise that focused initially on Southern Gold’s Beopseongpo and Deokon project areas.
Neungju was the third and final phase of this initial field work and the program included the production of a Semi-detailed, 1:2,000 scale geological and structural mapping of the central segment of license Neungju 33, carried out by one epithermal consulting geologist, assisted by two Southern Gold Korea geologists.
Sampling program completed
The company reported that an intensive sampling program was completed at Neungju with over 130 new samples being taken and submitted for analysis.
SAU reported that the work to date included systematic field traversing, extensive rock sampling and 1:2,000 geological mapping.
The company announced that this work has identified three new vein corridors (The Oesin, Jidong, and Lee Spur vein zones), and has extended both the Naesin (southern) vein corridor and Yeppeuda (northern) vein corridors.
Five corridors mapped
The company reported that five corridors of sheeted and network vein development have been tentatively mapped within the area.
The five corridors are the Naesin, Oesin, Yeppeuda, Lee Spur, and Jidong vein corridors.
The company reported that the corridors exhibit widths of 2 to (in excess of) 100 metres, and have traceable exposed outcrop, subcrop and float train segments ranging between 25 and 650 metres in strike extent with a combined strike of over 1 kilometre and are open in both strike directions.
High-grade results
The company announced that all five vein corridors returned samples >1g/t Au with the Naesin, Yeppeuda and Lee Spur vein systems returning high grade samples.
The company announced that the peak result returned was 31.8g/t gold and 6.6g/t silver from within the Naesin Vein Corridor.
Other high-grade results include 13.4 g/t Au and 13.1 g/t Ag (float) at Naesin; 6.79 g/t Au and 9.8 g/t Ag, and 6.44 g/t Au and 10.9 g/t Ag at Yeppueda (float); and and 6.17 g/t Au and 25.2 g/t Ag (outcrop) at Lee Spur.
The company said that the results of completed, semi-detailed geological mapping, and surface sampling to date indicates that Neungju has the potential for the discovery of a large, potentially highly gold-silver mineralised low-sulfidation epithermal deposit.
SAU said that the 250m section of the well-developed Yeppeuda vein and breccia zone is the best-defined mineralised zone in outcrop and subcrop to date and is ready for an initial phase of scout drill testing.
Updates and next steps
SAU reported that it is currently drilling at Beopseongpo and is planning to drill at the Deokon Golden Surprise Trend once local landowners and other stakeholders have been fully informed of developments.
The company said that the Neungju program will be likely after the programs at Beopseongpo and Deokon have been completed and subject to review of the drill results.
Southern Gold reported that its Korean team will hold discussions with local landowners to enable drilling to commence as soon as practicable.
SAU announced that the scout diamond drilling at Beopseongpo has commenced at the Lotus North project area where 4 drill holes were completed for 654m with assays pending. The company said that the rig has now moved to the Hand of Faith project area.
The company reported that the drilling of the first hole encountered difficult drilling conditions and has required replacement parts to be sent from China.
SAU said that drilling has been paused during the Chuseok National Holiday, 12 September to 15 September 2019 but will recommence shortly after.
Management statements
Southern Gold Managing Director, Simon Mitchell said: “These latest high-grade gold results continue to validate our project generation work that has been undertaken to date in South Korea. We are building a significant and very high-quality ‘drill ready’ portfolio while continuing to make new gold mineralised discoveries with each completed field program.
Our 100% owned Neungju Project target area has now expanded with these latest results and in an area which, to our knowledge, has never been previously drilled. Southern Gold’s technical team continues to believe that there is more to be found at district scale at Neungju into the medium term but, for now, the project is added to our ‘drill ready’ list.”
