5 N. Korean Defectors Are Reportedly on Way to Asylum

Five North Korean defectors who were arrested earlier this month at a Japanese consulate in China were reported to be on their way to asylum in South Korea today, apparently resolving an incident that has undermined Chinese-Japanese relations.

The face-saving deal was announced today by the Philippines, which said it was awaiting the arrival of the defectors, who would be stopping in Manila tonight on their way to South Korea. South Korean and Japanese officials had no immediate comment on the reported deal.

The fate of the North Korean family has been a subject of keen international interest ever since its members’ arrest May 8 at the Japanese consulate in Shenyang, where they had attempted to seek diplomatic asylum. Dramatic footage of the group, including two women and a 2-year-old girl, being dragged away by Chinese police was widely televised and prompted an outcry in Japan and South Korea.

Japan accused the Chinese of violating international law by arresting the defectors at a diplomatic compound, but China produced evidence that Japanese diplomats in China had approved the arrest.

The incident highlights the plight of more than 100,000 North Koreans who have escaped the famine and political repression in their country but must live as fugitives in China, which refuses to accord them refugee status. Although this particular group requested asylum in the United States, most defectors who are taken in go to South Korea. So far this year, South Korea has resettled more than 300 defectors.

“Our position is that the defectors should not be sent back to North Korea but should be dealt with in a humanitarian manner,” Kim Euy Taek, a spokesman for the South Korean Foreign Ministry, said today. He would not confirm, however, that the latest five were on their way to South Korea.

Franklin Ebdalin, foreign undersecretary of the Philippines, today told reporters in Manila that the defectors “will be transiting through Manila en route to South Korea, all five of them.”

The group includes a husband and wife, their 2-year-old daughter, Kim Han Mee--whose image during the arrest was repeatedly televised--her grandmother and an uncle. They have relatives in South Korea, including a cousin, Jang Gil Su, a teenage North Korean defector who published a well-known book about the dangers the family faced in North Korea and during the flight to China.

According to Japanese media, the family was to leave China this afternoon and arrive in the Philippines tonight, on the way to an arrival in South Korea early Thursday.

Refugee activists believe that the increased defections from North Korea through China are similar to the events of 1989, when East Germans fled to the West through Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

During the World Cup soccer games, jointly held in South Korea and Japan next month, activists are planning more asylum bids at several embassies in Asia.