A family of seven North Koreans spent last night in the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Beijing after entering the building yesterday and demanding refugee status.
The family, ranging in age from 15 to 69, claims it faces cruel punishment if forced to return to North Korea. The UNHCR said last night that the seven deserved asylum and it was trying to negotiate a solution.
The move placed China in a diplomatic quandary as it is one of North Korea's few allies.
A Japan-based support group for North Korean refugees said the family sought "a safe journey to South Korea" and wanted to highlight human rights abuses in North Korea.
In a statement the group said: "We are not afraid of dying anymore. We ask, on behalf of thousands of other North Korean refugees hiding in China, that the world pays more attention to our situation and gives us help."
Earlier yesterday, the UNHCR office in Beijing refused to allow journalists access to the building or to answer questions. But last night its regional representative, Mr Colin Mitchell, said the family members, who were in good health, would probably spend the night in its compound next door to the South Korean consulate.
"We will be hosting them, I should imagine, for one night. I wouldn't say it's not crowded, but there are amenities and the amenities are satisfactory," he said.
A UNHCR spokesman in Geneva, Mr Ron Redmond, said the case was just the "the tip of the iceberg", with reports that large numbers of North Koreans were leaving their homeland for China.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman denied at a news conference yesterday that there was a refugee problem between China and North Korea. "Judging from the international law and the purposes of their entry into China, they are not refugees," she said.
A South Korean Foreign Ministry official said Seoul was willing to give the seven asylum but stressed that the decision was totally up to the Chinese government. "But we are ready to take them, once they are given refugee status and if they really want to come here."
The group includes a 17-year-old artist whose drawings depicting life in North Korea could subject the family to punishment if they are returned to their country.
The Japanese journalist who accompanied the seven to Beijing and into the UNHCR compound showed reporters crayon drawings depicting people scrounging for food and uniformed policemen torturing and shooting refugees.
He said the seven, three of them women, had been in China since January, 1999.
They were among 17 family members who fled North Korea.
Three were sent back and the rest are in China or Mongolia, he said.
China's long-awaited entry to the World Trade Organisation is now "very close", the WTO Director-General, Mr Mike Moore, said yesterday.
His remarks followed the successful conclusion over the past two weeks of separate negotiations between China and the two leading trading powers, the EU and the US.