A group of people claiming to be North Koreans entered a school for South Koreans in Beijing yesterday, a South Korean embassy spokesman confirmed.
"We have dispatched consulate officials to the Korean International School for investigation," the spokesman said, declining to confirm how many people forced their way into the school.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted school officials as saying that 29 people -- 23 women and six men -- cut through barbed wire to enter the school through the back gate.
Unlike embassies or consulate offices, schools for foreigners are not protected by diplomatic immunity, Yonhap said.
The school, which has 556 South Korean students, immediately informed the South Korean embassy of the incident and called for support and guidance, it said.
South Korean cable news network YTN quoted Yoo In-Hoo, a school official, as saying: "Their entry here has been reported to the embassy, and we are waiting for its order."
The Korean embassy spokesman in Beijing declined to say what action the embassy will take and gave no further information about the incident.
A week earlier, a group of some 20 North Koreans, including children and women, forced their way into the South Korean consulate in Beijing saying they wanted to go to Seoul.
The consulate now protects about 130 North Korean refugees, Yonhap said.
Hundreds of North Koreans have been allowed to defect to South Korea after taking refuge at diplomatic missions in China.
There are 44 North Korean refugees holed up at the Canadian embassy and 24 others at a Japanese school.
Chronic food and energy shortages have driven a growing number of North Koreans to enter China illegally, most of whom seek refuge in South Korea.
More than 4,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the end of the war on the peninsula in 1953, most of them in the past three years.
RSS