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By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 29, 2001; 12:44 PM

BEIJING, June 29 ?An extended family of seven North Korean refugees, who had been hiding in a U.N. office in Beijing for four days, were allowed to leave China this morning after intensive negotiations between U.N. officials and the Chinese government.

The family ?a couple, two teen-age children, two grandparents and a teen-age nephew ?had said they would face persecution if China forcibly returned them to North Korea. Dismal pictures by one of the teenagers had appeared in a book published in South Korea illustrating life in the famine-stricken Stalinist regime, leading U.N. officials to conclude that the family's fears of persecution were justified.

"China had no objection to their departure. There were some health concerns in the family that could be more adequately addressed elsewhere," said Colin Mitchell, the chief representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Beijing.

The departure of the seven ?to Singapore where they arrived this evening ?ends what could have potentially become a sticky human rights issue for China, two weeks before a decision is due on Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics. The group went to Singapore first, an Asian diplomat said, as part of a solution worked out between Beijing and Seoul so as to avoid irritating North Korea. They will head to South Korea soon, he said.

In the past, China has forcibly returned thousands of refugees from North Korea, arguing that they are not refugees, but economic migrants. In January 2000, the UNHCR accused China of violating international law when it returned a group of seven North Koreans even though U.N. protection officers had granted them refugee status.

China returns refugees to North Korea because it has an agreement with the isolated regime to do so. It also takes an intermittently tough line with North Korean refugees because it does not want to encourage an exodus into China.

However, tens of thousands of refugees from North Korea live in northeastern China anyway, because Chinese-Koreans give them food and shelter and South Korean aid agencies, operating under cover, provide money and other support.

This week, China also had another eye on South Korea. Beijing has ties with both Pyongyang and Seoul and Beijing's treatment of North Korean refugees at times has become a major issue in its ties with the south.

Earlier this year, for example, more than 11.8 million South Koreans signed a petition to the United Nations urging better treatment for refugees from North Korea ?an indirect but forceful critique of China's treatment of those people.

China did not acknowledge that the family members were refugees, Mitchell said.

On Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said that "judging from international law and their purpose in coming to China, they are not refugees."

On Thursday, Amnesty International said the family faced anything from seven years in prison to execution if returned to North Korea. The reclusive communist regime considers it a serious offense to leave without permission and to criticize the country.

The family ? 49-year-old Jang Gil Su, his wife, their two teen-age children, two grandparents and a nephew ? has been living in secret in northeast China since fleeing North Korea in 1999.

U.N. officials said one of the boys, identified as 17-year-old Lee Min-chul, had contributed pictures depicting life in North Korea to a book published in South Korea last year.

The book consists of crayon-like drawings of the family's escape, including armed soldiers in guard towers, people in handcuffs and a stick figure eating a rat.

A Japanese journalist, Jiro Ishimaru, who accompanied the seven family members to Beijing said they belong to a larger family of 17 that escaped into northern China. Several headed to Mongolia, the whereabouts of three or four are unknown and Chinese authorities captured and forcibly returned one couple, he said.

North Koreans interviewed near the Chinese border say they leave North Korea because food is distributed inequitably in that country. Food shortages, caused mostly by bad economic policies, have ravaged North Korea since 1994. Western food aid feeds about one third of North Korea's 22 million people. But the refugees say that such aid is distributed only to "useful" or loyal citizens ?such as miners or members of the Korean Workers Party.

Several major Western aid agencies have pulled out of North Korea over the past two years because, they said, Pyongyang barred them from administering to poorer segments of the society.

Western criticism of the inequitable aid distribution has been muted, according to Western diplomats, because world powers are more concerned with convincing North Korea to halt its missile and nuclear-weapons programs than with how Pyongyang feeds its people.