South Korea is pressuring China to stop the deportation of a group of alleged defectors from North Korea back to their home country, officials said Wednesday.

The move comes days after a South Korean humanitarian group, the Commission to Help North Korean Refugees (CNKR), claimed that a total of 35 North Korean defectors were rounded up in China at the end of last month to be sent back home.

As North Korea’s largest ally, China does not recognize North Korean defectors within its borders as refugees and regularly deports them back to North Korea, where they are said to face severe punishments ranging from torture to public execution.

Huh Seung-jae, an official in charge of relations with China at Seoul’s foreign ministry, said he will leave for the northeastern Chinese city of Yanji Thursday to handle the issue from there, where two of the defectors were apparently arrested.

“We have raised three points with China,” Huh, a director for the ministry’s Northeast Asian affairs bureau, told Yonhap News Agency by phone. “We are asking them to first confirm the truth of the (CNKR’s) report, and if is true, we’re opposing the forced repatriation of the defectors against their free will.”

Lastly, if there are any South Korean nationals among the group, their deportation to the North will be strictly unacceptable, he said.

At a parliamentary audit, Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said two of the defectors hold South Korean nationality after having defected to the South, adding that the government is confirming whether there are any teenagers or elderly people among the group.

“Forced repatriation is unacceptable,” he said. “(We) are in contact with the Chinese and strongly urging them against deportation.”

More than 20,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War to flee poverty and political repression in their homeland. Many of them reach the South after crossing the border into China.

Human rights activists believe more than 100,000 North Koreans may still be in China in search of a safe route to South Korea. 

(Yonhap News)