As many as 19 people believed to be North Korean asylum seekers tried to climb a fence and enter a South Korean consulate in Beijing yesterday, but only three succeeded, a diplomat and a news report said.
Some of the rest were taken away by Chinese guards while others fled the scene, an Asian diplomat in Beijing and South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said.
It wasn't clear how many were caught by police.
Yonhap said 18 North Koreans were involved, while the diplomat, who asked not to be further identified, put the number at 19.
The people scuffled with Chinese guards as they tried to climb a fence outside the consulate, Yonhap said.
Darkness
South Korean television showed footage of the North Koreans climbing the fence in the pre-dawn darkness.
Once inside the compound, the three North Koreans unfurled a South Korean flag and shouted, "Let us live!"
The three people who entered the consulate building were two women and one child, Yonhap said.
It said they asked to go to South Korea.
The incident came three days after 29 North Korean asylum seekers entered a South Korean school in Beijing.
Such asylum bids have become common in China, with North Koreans who are fleeing famine and repression in their communist nation rushing into embassies, schools and other foreign facilities.
Chinese officials have allowed many of the asylum seekers to leave the country for South Korea.
Last year, the number of defectors arriving in the South reached 1,285, up from 1,140 in 2002 and 583 in 2001.
Surging
The number of large groups of North Koreans seeking asylum has been surging in recent months.
Last month, a group of 44 North Koreans scaled a spiked fence to enter the Canadian embassy in the largest known asylum bid.
They were still in the embassy on Friday and an embassy spokesman wasn't available for comment yesterday.
Two weeks ago, 20 North Koreans entered the same South Korean consulate building by scaling fences and crawling under barbed wire.
In August, another 29 North Koreans scaled a wall to get into a Japanese school.
The Japanese government hasn't released any information on their status.
More than 5,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the Korean War, which ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
The Koreas were divided in 1945. Their border remains sealed and guarded by nearly 2 million troops on both sides.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS