SEOUL: Some 400 North Korean refugees who fled to Thailand have launched a hunger strike to protest alleged delays in their resettlement in South Korea, an activist group and officials said on Wednesday.

But the group said three teenage defectors detained in Laos, who had feared possible repatriation to their homeland and harsh punishment, have been transferred to the South Korean embassy in the Lao capital Vientiane.

"Some 100 male and 314 female North Korean defectors started a hunger strike (in Thailand) on Tuesday evening," Lee Ho-Taeg, secretary general of the International Campaign to Block the Repatriation of North Korean Refugees, told AFP.

"They are angry at extended delays in bringing them to the South," he said, adding there were unconfirmed reports that the South Korean government refused to grant them air tickets.

He said the North Koreans, who have been confined for up to three months to a detention centre in Bangkok, face harsh living conditions.

"About 300 women are held in the facility, which is barely enough for 100 people. There is only one toilet and more than 300 women have to share it," he said.

Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon confirmed the hunger strike without giving a number, and said Seoul had been in negotiations with Bangkok to "resolve the issue smoothly". He declined to give details.

Lee's group also said the three teenagers in Laos have been released and handed over to Seoul's embassy after being held in custody for more than five months for illegal entry.

Song refused to comment on the three.

They have been identified as Choi Hyang, 13, and her 12-year-old brother Choi Hyok, who lost their mother in 1999 and came to China in 2002.

The third one is 17-year-old Choi Hyang-Mi, who arrived in China in 2001 with her mother but was parted from her after the mother married a Chinese man, Lee's group said.

"We have come this far in search of freedom. We are unfortunate children who may die just because we wanted freedom," wrote Choi Hyang in an appeal for help released by the Japanese group Life Funds for North Korean Refugees.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans, fleeing hunger or repression in the hardline communist state, have travelled across the border to China in recent years.

China has an agreement with its ally North Korea to repatriate them as economic migrants, a policy strongly criticised by refugee aid groups. The refugees often travel on to third countries like Mongolia or Thailand in hopes of winning eventual resettlement in South Korea.

But South Korean diplomats in the past have been accused by refugee groups of being unhelpful to the refugees, in order to avoid provoking Pyongyang.

Many are helped by rights organisations linked with Protestant churches in South Korea.

The number of northerners who had made it to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean war topped the 10,000 mark in February.

Estimates of the number hiding out in northeast China range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

Human Rights Watch last month said North Korea has toughened its punishments for people caught trying to flee – including longer prison terms during which they face beatings and starvation.


- AFP/so