Beijing pressed on Korean asylum

The family fled North Korea two years ago

South Korea has urged China to grant asylum to a family of seven North Koreans seeking refugee status.

The Jang family entered the office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Beijing and requested asylum on Tuesday.

The request puts Beijing in a difficult position: It does not want to open the gates to potential floods of North Koreans fleeing famine, but is mindful of its international reputation shortly before a decision on where the 2008 Olympic Games are to be held.

Mitchell: Unthinkable that they be returned

The UNHCR has expressed support for the Jang family's request, with one official calling it "absolutely unthinkable" that they be returned to North Korea, where they would face severe punishment.

UNHCR regional representative Colin Mitchell said the agency was meeting Chinese officials to try to find "a solution that would be acceptable to all parties".

The family, who have been in China since 1999, are seeking safe passage to South Korea.

The government in Seoul has intervened on their behalf, saying it hopes China "respects their free will in deciding their place of settlement".

It has also formed a task force to monitor discussions about the family.

Migrants, not refugees

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Beijing says China is under tremendous moral pressure to let them go to South Korea.

China is a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, but is also bound by treaty with Pyongyang to return fleeing North Koreans.

Beijing officially considers such people to be economic migrants, not refugees.

On Tuesday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said: "We believe that at the moment, there's no refugee problem between China and North Korea."

North Korea wants escapees returned

But anywhere from 10,000 to 300,000 North Koreans are thought to have escaped across the border into China over the past decade after a series of famines and natural disasters in their homeland.

China has sent hundreds back across the border in recent months.

A Japanese-based human rights group called Rescue the Northern Korean People (RENK) say those who return face harsh punishment and often end up in prison labour camps.

Drawings of famine

According to Jiro Ishimaru, a Japanese reporter who accompanied the Jang family to the UNHCR office, the family consists of a couple in their 60s, their daughter and son-in-law and three grandchildren. They range in age from 15 to 69.

Our correspondent says they seemed to be in good spirits on Wednesday, their second day in the UN compound.

Mr Ishimaru said that the family decided to seek refuge because they had published a book of drawings of the famine in North Korea.

The book shows the family fleeing famine and a stick-like person eating a rat.

It describes the Pyongyang government as a dictatorship and blames it for "destroying the lives of millions of innocent people", Japanese human rights activists said.