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SEOUL: Four North Korean refugees who sought asylum in the Danish embassy in Vietnam earlier this month have been handed over in a third country to South Korean officials, a report said on Tuesday.
"On Friday they left Hanoi in order to go to South Korea," Thomas Moller, a Danish foreign ministry official, was quoted as saying on Radio Free Asia's Korean-language website.
"Actually it went quite smoothly. We are quite happy with the process," he said, referring to the handover in an unidentified third country.
The South Korean foreign ministry refused to confirm the report. The Seoul government usually refuses to confirm the movements of refugees for fear of damaging relations with the North.
Tens of thousands of North Koreans, fleeing hunger or repression in their communist homeland, have crossed the border into China in recent years.
The refugees often travel on to Mongolia or other Southeast Asian countries in hopes of winning eventual resettlement in South Korea.
- AFP/so
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