On Thursday South Korean officials announced that the entire country has been alerted against highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease.

Animals at a farm in Cheongju, about 90 miles south of Seoul, were reported showing some of the symptoms on Wednesday.

The alert level has been raised because pigs have also been reported to be infected, which means a much faster speed of infection.

Pigs are three thousand times more apt to become infected by the disease than cows.

[Jang Tae-pyeong, Minister of Food, Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries]: (Korean, probably male)
"The government will strengthen the crisis-management-status as there was an outbreak of the foot and mouth disease at a pig farm located in Cheongju of Chungbuk today."

The Cheongju outbreak shows the virus has spread beyond the outskirts of Seoul, where all previous cases had occurred.

Over 42-thousand livestock have been culled so far on the infected farms.

South Korea experienced its first outbreak of foot-and-mouth in cows in early 2000.

This led to an import ban on the country's pork even though the disease had not infected pigs.