CHINA: China and South Korea have agreed to permit two dozen North Koreans holed up in Seoul's consulate in Beijing to travel to South Korea via a third country, ending a month-long diplomatic stand-off.
China's official Xinhua news agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying that the North Korean asylum-seekers would be allowed to go provided they had not committed a crime in China.
In Seoul, the South Korea foreign ministry issued a statement which added that the 23 North Koreans inside the South Korean consulate in Beijing and one North Korean man who was dragged away by Chinese police would "leave Beijing for a third country and enter South Korea as soon as possible".
A South Korean diplomat in Beijing said the North Koreans had left the consulate but declined to say anything further. South Korean television reported that two had already left China and the rest would follow.
In Manila, a senior Philippine foreign ministry official said he had recommended to the government that it approve a South Korean embassy request to allow 25 North Korean asylum-seekers to travel through Manila en route to Seoul. It was not clear why the numbers of asylum-seekers announced by Seoul and Manila did not match.
China has an agreement with its old communist ally North Korea to return defectors but is also sensitive to its human rights image in the West.