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A total of 45 North Korean refugees tried to seek asylum in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday, with one person arrested by police and 44 others succeeding, paving the way for their deportation to South Korea. They climbed over the stone wall surrounding the embassy, using a steel ladder at around 2:45 p.m. (local time).
This group of North Korean refugees is the largest ever to seek safety in a foreign diplomatic mission, 15 more people than the 29 refugees who sought shelter in the Japanese School in Beijing back on Oct. 1. Experts point out that the number of North Korean refugee groups seeking a pathway to South Korea is on the rise, with two successful attempts this month.
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A total of 45 North Korean refugees climb a metal ladder outside the wall of the Canadian Embassy in Chaoyang, Beijing, China on Wednesday. Some of them are disguised as construction laborers.
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Among the North Korean refugees who succeeded in entering the Canadian embassy, there were 17 males and 27 females, which also consisted of five families, including two pairs of mother and son, one pair of mother and daughter, and maternal grandmother and grandson. Two political prisoners from concentration camps were also among the refugees. Lee, a 31-year-old man, who worked as a train engineer, escaped from the Yodeok concentration camp. Kim, a 38-year-old woman, testified that her entire family was in some kind of concentration camp and that she was witness to the death of a family member at one of these camps.
Kim, a 66-year-old woman, escaped from North Korea with her three daughters and son back in 1997, but were arrested and sent back to the country. After losing one daughter to torture, she succeeded in escaping North Korea once again, this time with one of her remaining daughters and together scaling the wall into the Canadian Embassy. Lee, a 44-years-old, was once rejected after he sought refuge in a Korean Embassy a day after a group of North Koreans were admitted to South Korea via a Southeast Asian country in July. He crossed the border into China and succeeded in entering the embassy this time.
So far, Chinese authorities have allowed North Korean refugees, who seek asylum in foreign missions in their country, to be sent to South Korea through a third country. Accordingly, the 44 refugees who entered the Canadian Embassy on this day seem to have achieved their goal of gaining entrance into the South. Of the North Korean refugees from the Japanese School, five have already arrived in South Korea through a third country.
A South Korean government official stated on Wednesday that the basic principal of this administration is to accept all North Korean refugees who wish to enter South Korea, adding that upon deliberation between Chinese authorities and the Canadian Embassy in China, they would move ahead with bringing the refugees to the South after some questioning.
(Cho Joong-sik, jscho@chosun.com )
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