Friday, October 15, 2004
N Koreans barge into S Korean consulate in Beijing: Reports
Associated Press Seoul, October 15
A group of 20 people who claimed to be North Koreans entered the grounds of the South Korean consulate in Beijing on Friday in a bid to seek asylum, news reports said. The group of six males and 14 females entered the consulate around 6.00 am, said YTN, an all-news cable channel, and other South Korean news media.
The group included three teenagers, YTN said. YTN footage showed the intruders crawling under a barbed-wire perimeter fence at pre-dawn dusk. They then climbed over a wall topped with barbed wire into the consulate compound. The adults helped push the teens over the wall.
"We want to go to South Korea!" they chanted as they squatted and huddled on the wall of a consulate building whose doors remained locked.
They were later allowed inside the building where 100 North Koreans were already taking refugee, hoping to travel to the South, the reports said.
Officials at South Korea's Foreign Ministry declined to confirm the reports, but said there would be an official announcement later. Officials in Beijing were not immediately available for comment. Thousands of North Koreans fleeing starvation and repression in their communist nation have passed through China, most heading for South Korea.
Many have been allowed to leave for South Korea after seeking refuge in embassies and other foreign offices. Last year, the number reached 1,285, up from 1,140 in 2002.
On September 1, a group of 29 would-be North Korean defectors climbed a wall to get into the Japanese school in Beijing. That group was quickly spirited off to the Japanese Embassy. There has been no recent news of their whereabouts.
While Beijing is Pyongyang's closest ally and is obliged by treaty to send home fleeing North Koreans, it hasn't done so in cases that become public.
South and North Korea were divided in 1945. Their border remains sealed and heavily guarded by nearly 2 million troops on both sides following the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
© HT Media Ltd. 2004.