Abstract
Bupyong lead-silver mine is located at outskirt of Inchon, a harbor city on the Yellow Sea about 40 km due west of Seoul. The geology of the area is composed of gneisses of pre-Cambrian age, rhyolite of Jurassic to Cretaceous age which extruded over the gneisses and late Cretaceous granite. Small diabasic dike is observed only in the underground. The contact plane between overlying rhyolite and underlain gneiss is sinuous and generally pitches about $30^{\circ}{\sim}40^{\circ}$ toward east. Conjugate joints and fissures are well developed in the rhyolite striking generally north-southward. Three ore bodies are being exploited and three more are under prospecting. These ore bodies range from few tons of hundred thousand to million tons in reserve. These ore bodies occur exclusively in the rhyolite along joints as network and/or desseminated type. The lower limit of ore bodies is always delineated at about 20~30m above the gneiss which might be indicative of ore genesis that has not been clearly explained so far. Two hypothesis on ore genesis could, however, be considered: firstly lithologic difference in the rhyolite might be a manifestation of different flows along which ore solution ascended and replaced along joints; secondly diabasic dike has acted as ore bringer since the dike contains considerable amount of silver, lead and zine. Ore minerals are galena and native silver accompanied by pyrite, argentite, pyragyrite and magnetite. It is believed that pyritization took place in advance to main mineralization, and ore deposit is classified as meso- to epi-thermal type.