DATE=03/15/02

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=CHINA / NOKOR ASYLUM (S&L)

NUMBER=2-287584

BYLINE=JIM RANDLE

DATELINE=BEIJING

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: The diplomatic stand-off over two dozen North Korean asylum seekers in Beijing is apparently over. As V-O-A's Jim Randle reports, media reports say the group may be flown to a third country.

TEXT: Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji says that China had "reached an agreement" on what to do with 25 North Korean asylum seekers who rushed into the Spanish Embassy in Beijing Thursday, demanding asylum and passage to South Korea.

/// ZHU ACT IN CHINESE, FADE UNDER ///

Mr. Zhu says the matter will be handled "according to law" and be resolved soon, but gave no details.

Some of the North Koreans said they were carrying rat poison and threatened to kill themselves if they were sent back to their starving homeland. The group includes children as young as 10 years old.

News reports say the asylum seekers will leave China for a third country later today. In a similar case last year, a group of North Koreans traveled to the Philippines before eventually landing in South Korea.

The demand for asylum presents a difficult diplomatic problem for China, which has strong ties to its communist neighbor North Korea. It has a treaty obligation to return "economic migrants" to North Korea.

Many foreign human rights groups and governments say the North Koreans would be brutally treated if they go home and should be protected as political refugees.

/// REST OPT FOR LONG ///

China has been criticized for sending other fleeing North Koreans back home. Tens of thousands of North Koreans are said to be hiding in the largely ethnic-Korean areas in China close to the 13-hundred-kilometer border with North Korea.

North Korea has endured serious food shortages since 1995 caused by a series of natural disasters and economic mismanagement, and millions of the country's citizens depend on foreign food aid donations to survive. (Signed).

NEB/HK/JR/HB/RH