South Korea on Sunday said it had confirmed an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N6 bird flu at a duck farm in the south west of the country and raised its bird flu alert level to the highest ranking. The virus was discovered on a farm on Saturday with some 12,000 ducks in Gochang county, over 270 km (167.77 miles) southwest of Seoul. All of the ducks were slaughtered after the discovery, the agriculture ministry said in a statement. This was the country's first such outbreak since June this year.