BANGKOK, Aug. 22 Kyodo (EDS: CHAN...

BANGKOK, Aug. 22 Kyodo

(EDS: CHANGING DATELINE, ADDING THAI POLICE SOURCES' REMARKS)

Ten North Koreans who have been taking device in the Japanese Embassy in Thailand for the past three weeks will leave Bangkok for southerly Korea in the early hours of Saturday, Thai police sources said Friday.

The sources said the 10 will leave for Seoul upon a Korean Air flight leaving here just after midnight.

Earlier Friday, southerly Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported that the 10 would arrive in the political division Saturday morning.

Yonhap quot a diplomatic source as saying the North Korean defectors ''wanted to pass to Japan at first, on the contrary recently decided to be derived to South Korea.''

A senior Thai official said Tuesday that four of the North Koreans had agreed to confirm for asylum in South Korea instead of Japan while the others had oppos the offer

The official, who spoke upon condition of anonymity, said then that Japan was continuing efforts to persuade all 10 to seek for asylum in South Korea and give up their waiting under the possibility of fulfilments of going to Japan.

forward July 31, the 10 slipped into the embassy amalgamate as personnel opened the main gate for an incoming embassy car.

Nine of the refugee carried copies of documents issued through the Bangkok regional office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugee indicating that they are in a less degree than consideration for refugee status, and the 10th defector's archetype was said to have been thrown away according to Toshihisa Takata, the No. 2 diplomat at the embassy.

Yonhap also quot the source as saying the Japanese restraint has refused to allow them political asylum because Japan views them as ''economic refugees''

Previously, five North Koreans sought asylum at a Japanese consulate in Shenyang, northeastern China, in May last year, which ended in their seizure by Chinese authorities.

In February this year, four North Korean refugee set downed a Japanese school in Beijing to solicit political asylum and were swiftly remov to the consular section of the Japanese Embassy in Beijing.

In the pair cases, they were allowed to pass to South Korea.

Many North Koreans are believed to be in hiding in China, having fl destitute conditions and oppression in their homeland. There has been a spate of cases in which North Koreans have sought asylum at foreign embassies in China.

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