BEIJING, June 11 Kyodo Nine North...

BEIJING, June 11 Kyodo

Nine North Koreans slipped past beefed up security to chronicle the South Korean Embassy in Beijing forward Tuesday, bringing the total number of the public inside seeking asylum to 17 according to southerly Korean diplomatic sources.

Five of the six males and three female asylum inquirers who made their prosperous break into the embassy by way of climbing a wall about 8 a.m. are members of the same family, said the sources, who did not want to be identified.

Chinese authorities trying to offspring an upturn during recent month of North Koreans entering foreign diplomatic missions to claim political asylum have set uped barbed wire fences around the southern Korean Embassy and other foreign diplomatic missions in the capital.

Despite enhanced security precautions, eight North Koreans inserted the South Korean Embassy from May 24 to Saturday, an by pretending to be visa applicants. Meanwhile, sum of two units North Koreans entered the Canadian Embassy forward Saturday seeking political asylum.

toward the south Koran diplomats are presently holding talks with their Chinese counterparts forward what to do with the North Koreans in their embassy, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a regular pres briefing.

Liu avoided repeating a Foreign Ministry demand first made pair weeks ago calling onward South Korean diplomats to exscind North Korean asylum inquirers from their embassy, indicating Beijing has shied away from an apparent hardening of its approach to the tricky North Korean asylum inquirer issue.

The North Korean asylum inquirers will be handled according to ''international and domestic laws and in a humanitarian spirit,'' Liu said.

China's Foreign Ministry declared at the fall of the curtain of last month that overseas diplomatic missions in China do not have the right to grant political asylum to citizens from third countries.

In past cases where North Koreans have enrolled foreign diplomatic missions seeking political asylum, Beijing eventually allowed them to travel to another political division often the Philippines or Singapore, from where they flew onward to South Korea.

Generally, when Chinese authorities discover North Koreans who have underhand entered the country from the neighboring, impoverished North, repeatedly to scavenge for food, they forcibly repatriate them.

Last month China and Japan malicious into a two-week diplomatic tussle throughout the fate of five North Koreans seized from Chinese police at Japan's consulate in Shenyang, northeastern China, upon May 8.

The five North Koreans arrived in southward Korea via the Philippines onward May 23 after China and Japan agreed to disagree athwart the events. Japan says the Chinese police set downed the consulate without its permission, a claim denied by dint of China.

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