Report: Four North Koreans enter U.S. diplomatic mission

SEOUL, South Korea -- Four North Koreans overpowered a security guard and scaled the wall of a U.S. consulate in China in hopes of gaining asylum from their impoverished, communist country, South Korean media reported Saturday.

The Chosun Ilbo newspaper said the four entered the U.S. consulate in the northeastern city of Shenyang from the neighboring South Korean consulate by climbing a wall separating the two compounds.

A Chinese security guard employed by the Korean mission tried to stop them, but the North Koreans overpowered him, the paper said.

Chosun said the North Koreans were applying for asylum and resettlement in the United States.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency carried a similar report and described the three men and one woman as in their 20s or 30s. Neither Chosun nor Yonhap said when the incident took place or identified the North Koreans.

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Beijing said she could neither confirm nor deny the report. A South Korean foreign ministry spokesman said the government had no comment.

If the asylum bid is successful, it would be only the second case of Washington accepting North Koreans as refugees. The first case involved six North Koreans who arrived in the United States just this month. Their success may have prompted the latest case, the news reports speculated.

Most North Koreans fleeing their impoverished homeland take refuge at South Korean missions.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans are believed to be living in China, which views them as migrant workers rather than refugees and sends them back under a treaty with Pyongyang.

More than 8,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, with about 5,700 of those arriving since 2002. Last year 1,387 defectors arrived in the South.