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Refugees may have to return to N Korea after asylum denied

More than 100 North Korean refugees seeking asylum have been expelled from southeast Asia to China and face deportation to the North, a human rights leader said yesterday.

Chun Ki-won, who leads a group of missionaries that helps North Koreans in China as well as those that reach various countries in southeast Asia, said the refugees had been captured and sent back across the border from Vietnam and were being held in a prison in southern China.

"The chances of them winning freedom are bad. It's a desperate situation," Chun said.

The group is made up of refugees who entered Vietnam after more than 460 North Korean refugees were flown to South Korea on July 27 and 28, he said.

That was the largest group from the North to reach the South since the 1950 to 1953 Korean War that divided the peninsula.

That group flew out of Vietnam, but some of the refugees are believed to reach other southeast Asian nations before congregating in Vietnam.

Unlike the airlift of the larger group last month, Seoul is not likely to be able to step in to secure the release of the more recent asylum seekers, he said.

Aid workers estimate 100,000 refugees -- and possibly double that number -- are in hiding, mostly in China.

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon declined to comment.

"I'm not in a position to comment on whether there has been a group of North Korean repatriated," Ban told a news conference.

South Korea had pursued what it called "quiet diplomacy" in bringing the group of 460 refugees to the South last month, working in secrecy and declining official confirmation of any part of the operation, including which southeast Asian nation the refugees were flying from.

But the South has since faced a souring of relations with what Ban referred to only as "the country concerned" as well as with North Korea.

North Korea accused the South of premeditated abduction and terrorism against its people, and has refused to discuss continuing bilateral talks with Seoul.

Activists say many more large groups of North Korean refugees escaping rights abuse and starvation at home are trying to come to the South but Seoul is inadequately prepared to help their journey.

One activist said the southeast Asian countries where the refugees flock to before setting off to South Korea have friendly ties with the North and this poses a diplomatic challenge for Seoul.

Ban said the difficulties in the government's work were in large part created by "unnecessarily high-profile media coverage" of last month's refugee arrival.
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