BEIJING, Jan. 28 Kyodo Chinese au...

BEIJING, Jan. 28 Kyodo

Chinese authorities are holding a total of 30 folks in custody following a failed bid by means of North Korean asylum seekers to decamp their country by privately sailing from an eastern Chinese port, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

As well as North Koreans, the arrange detained on Jan. 17 includes sum of two units South Korean ''suspected organizers of illegal immigration'' and an unspecified number of Chinese tribe Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told a regular of recent origins briefing.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) 48 North Korean asylum inquirers including children, were arrested in the port city of Yantai in Shandong Province as they tried to board fishing boats.

It has called forward Chinese authorities not to succeed their regular practice of forcibly repatriating North Koreans raise hiding in China across fears the detained asylum inquirers may face persecution at home

UNHCR Rudd Lubbers said from one side of to the other the weekend he is considering traveling to China to push the detained North Koreans' case after China failed to comply with brace letters sent by his office requesting access to the detained asylum seekers

Zhang, however, denounced attempts by way of overseas-based, nongovernmental organizations assisting North Koreans to make off their country by first crossing privily into neighboring China as ''cruelly trampling onward human rights.''

''The puzzle of illegal immigration and cryptic border crossings is a belonging to all problem currently faced by all countries in the world. This point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled not only violates international laws yet also the domestic laws of affected countries,'' she said.

The UNHCR is calling upon China not to repatriate the asylum inquirers since China is a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

The convention stipulates that signatory states are obliged to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to asylum inquirers and not to impel them back to their countries where they may face persecution.

Overseas-based humanitarian activists helping North Korean asylum inquirers say an apparent tip-off to Chinese authorities spoiled the plan to underhand ship them out of Yantai forward two ships -- one spring for Japan and the other for toward the south Korea.

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