Chinese fishermen are held by South Korean maritime police in the western port of Inchon yesterday. South Korean police and troops are searching for more than 100 ethnic Koreans smuggled to South Korea from China aboard Chinese fishing vessels. PHOTO: AFP

Seoul hunts for Korean-Chinese refugees

AFP, SEOUL

South Korean police and troops yesterday were hunting more than 100 ethnic Koreans smuggled into the country on Chinese fishing vessels last week, officials said.

Police said they had detained one of the 108 illegal immigrants. The man claimed to have escaped from North Korea but told police that the other 107 were all ethnic Koreans from China.

News of the manhunt was released two days after a family of seven North Koreans arrived in Seoul, having spent three days holed up at a UN refugee agency office in Beijing last week demanding safe passage to South Korea.

China normally sends North Koreans that it catches back to the communist state.

Aid groups say escapees are sometimes executed there.

Tangjin police said security forces, including troops, had step-ped up checks at major roads, expressways and nearby towns.

A growing number of Koreans in China are staging desperate bids to reach refuge in South Korea.

Police said the arrested man told them the 108 Koreans left the Chinese eastern port of Dairen on July 24 and crept ashore on South Korea's west coast near Tangjin on Friday.

Kim Jae-kook of the Tangjin police said the detained man was left behind by the group after sustaining a broken leg.

"We have launched a manhunt to arrest the rest of the 107 illegal immigrants but we fear they may already be a long way inland," Kim explained.

The arrested North Korean said he had escaped a Russian logging camp in 1994 after working there for two years and had fled to China.

Police quoted the man as saying the wanted group, all ethnic Koreans from China, included 20 women.

Humanitarian aid groups have said there are up to 300,000 North Koreans and ethnic Koreans in China waiting for a chance to get to the South.

More than 220 defectors from the North have arrived in South Korea this year and a record number is expected.

On Sunday, the latest seven North Korean asylum seekers were reunited with three relatives in Seoul after their tortuous two-year campaign to reach the South.

The seven, aged between 16 and 69, arrived in Seoul late Saturday evening after China allowed them to leave Beijing where they had sought asylum in the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Three relatives, who were in the same group that fled the communist North in 1999, arrived separately in Seoul on Friday, Yonhap news agency reported.

Human rights activists say many North Korean escapees are turned away by South Korean embassies.

The North Korean family group had to resort to the UN office because of the lack of official help from Seoul, they said.

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