Sat, Sep 26, 2009 page5

• N Koreans face two-week mission stay

  • AFP
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  A group of North Koreans living in a tent at the Danish embassy in Hanoi could spend two weeks there while authorities decide how to deal with their political asylum claim, a source said yesterday.

  After entering the Danish compound on Thursday morning they spent the night in a garage and an attached tent erected for them, said the Vietnamese diplomatic source.

  “People involved are working together to find a solution for these people,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s foreseen that they’ll stay there up to two weeks but hopefully they can leave as soon as possible.”

  The source said there were eight asylum seekers — six women and two men — who were accompanied by a South Korean national when they reached the embassy.

  A Seoul-based activist said there were nine North Koreans.

  The defectors are hoping to reach South Korea and turned to the Danes for help after authorities from Seoul refused to assist them, Kim Sang-hun, a leader of the International Network of North Korean Human Rights Activists, said.

  In a statement, Kim’s organization said it and two other non-governmental groups had helped the nine defectors reach the Danish embassy.

  The activists complained they have faced “chronic difficulties” in enlisting help from South Korean diplomatic missions to protect North Korean refugees in third countries, and in particular urged South Korea’s embassy in Vietnam “to take a more proactive role.”

  No official at the South Korean embassy could immediately be reached and South Korea’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the complaints.

  A spokesman said the government always pays attention to the safety and human rights of North Korean escapees.

  The activist group said the defectors included a doctor and his wife, a mother and her 13-year-old daughter and a woman who had worked as a “virtual slave” in a Chinese karaoke club.

  All nine had defected to China at least once but some had been caught and sent back to North Korea before defecting again, the activist statement said.

  “We are now at the point of such desperation and live in such fear of persecution within North Korea that we have come to the decision to risk our lives for freedom rather than passively await our doom,” the statement said.

  Danish embassy cooks prepared breakfast and lunch for the asylum seekers, who received takeout rice dishes from the embassy for their dinner, the diplomatic source said, adding they were sharing toilet facilities used by embassy guards.

  “The persons are well,” Danish ambassador Peter Lysholt Hansen said yesterday, declining further comment.

  An official at North Korea’s diplomatic mission said he knew nothing about the case, the latest in a series of similar incidents involving North Koreans at various Hanoi embassies in recent years.

  In July 2007 four nationals from the Stalinist country crawled over the Danish embassy gate. They were reportedly later allowed into South Korea.

  The South Korean government in 2004 chartered a plane to fly out 468 North Korean refugees who were sheltering in its Hanoi embassy. The airlift angered Pyongyang and embarrassed Hanoi.

  Communist Vietnam has major business links with South Korea but sees North Korea as an ideological ally.
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