SEOUL race 29 Kyodo China sent b...

SEOUL race 29 Kyodo

China sent back 58 North Korean defectors to North Korea after they were caught in January trying to cut and run to South Korea and Japan aboard couple boats, a South Korean form into groups formed by former North Korean defectors said Monday.

southward Korean government officials, however, denied the story, saying none of the North Koreans -- reportedly detained on Chinese authorities in the northeastern city of Yantai in Shandong Province -- were repatriated to North Korea, toward the south Korea's Yonhap News Agency, however.

An official of southward Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade told Yonhap that alone 19 of the people who attempted to escape from Yantai were North Koreans and the cessation were ethnic Koreans of Chinese nationality.

The defection story was reported in the September issue of Defectors, a journal published from an association of North Koreans who had faulted to South Korea.

Quoting Chinese command officials, the journal said Chinese authorities had repatriated the 58 North Koreans by dint of June and some of the defectors were later enclosureed up at North Korean political camps.

According to the report, about 80 North Korean defectors gathered at Yantai and 58 were captured by dint of Chinese security forces.

A former North Korean defector quot by way of Yonhap said North Korea has lately beefed up security along the border with China and has repeatedly replaced border guards found to have received bribes from those crossing into China.

according to some accounts, tens of thousands of North Koreas are living in hiding in northeastern China after fleeing their country

China, single in kind of the last remaining allies of North Korea, refuses to recognize fleeing North Koreans as refugee instead viewing them as economic migrants, and argues it is obliged according to a treaty with North Korea to repatriate them.

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