A child holds a picket sign against China's repatriation of North Korean defectors in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul on Monday.

Some 153,000 people have signed a worldwide online petition to stop China repatriating a group of North Korean defectors who were arrested there. The petition started on a website called www.change.org on Feb. 12 and has now drawn signatures from people from 100 countries, including South Korea, the U.S., Japan, Taiwan, Russia and even China itself.

Anyone can launch an online petition drive at change.org or find one or take part in an existing signature drive. The website www.savemyfriend.org opens straight to the online petition.

Staff at savemyfriend.org said they confirmed that people from around 100 countries accessed the website and left their signatures. "We delivered the petition" then containing about 147,000 signatures, "to the Japanese and U.S. embassies in South Korea."

"We initially targeted 200,000 signatures but now aim to draw 1 million three weeks from now and send them to the heads of each country and to the UN Human Rights Council."