China asylum problem grows

Japan is sending a senior official to China

Another two North Korean asylum seekers have succeeded in entering a foreign embassy in the Chinese capital, Beijing.

Officials at the Canadian embassy have confirmed that a young man and a woman managed to enter the embassy on Saturday.

There has been a series of attempts by North Korean asylum seekers

This comes amid increased tension between Japan and China over Wednesday's incursion by Chinese paramilitary police into a Japanese consulate to remove a group of North Korean asylum seekers.

A Japanese deputy foreign minister is due in Beijing on Monday to push Tokyo's demand that the five North Koreans be allowed to leave China and not be returned to North Korea.

Numbers grow

The last two asylum seekers bring to 30 the number of North Koreans who have succeeded in entering foreign embassies and consulates in China in the last two months.

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes says that over the past two weeks the Chinese Government has gone to enormous lengths to try to prevent more North Korean asylum seekers from getting into foreign embassies.

Embassy compounds have been ringed with barbed-wire and surrounded by armed guards, some even wielding baseball bats.

But still the North Koreans keep coming, and keep getting through, our correspondent says.

The latest asylum bid comes with two previous asylum attempts in north-east China still unresolved.

Row with Japan

Three North Koreans remain holed up in the US consulate in the city of Shenyang nearly five days after they managed to climb over the wall.

And there is still no sign of a resolution to the diplomatic storm that has blown up between China and Japan after five North Koreans managed to enter the Japanese consulate in Shenyang.

China has stepped up security around embassies

China insists that a Japanese consular official gave the police permission to enter the mission and that the official later offered thanks for dealing with the situation.

However, Japan has denied this and is sending its deputy foreign minister to investigate the incident.

In March, 25 North Koreans successfully entered the Spanish embassy in Beijing demanding political asylum in South Korea. They threatened to kill themselves if China sent them back home.

Beijing regards the tens of thousands of North Koreans in China as economic migrants who must be sent home.

But in this and similar cases, the asylum seekers were allowed to go to South Korea, prompting other groups to try similar tactics.