Shanghai 'snakehead' gang arrested

Police in Shanghai say they've broken up a large gang which specialised in smuggling Chinese people into South Korea.

They say the racket was exposed when forty-one people posing as a business delegation tried to board a plane to South Korea using forged travel documents.

They told the police they paid almost five-thousand dollars each to be smuggled abroad.

Shanghai police so far say they've arrested ten suspected members of the trafficking gang.

The BBC Shanghai correspondent says the case shows the number of Chinese citizens who are willing to pay large amounts of money to realise their dream of working abroad. The Chinese authorities have promised to work closely with the European Union and several other countries to try to stem the number of people being smuggled out of China illegally.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service