Famine family drama could drag on

The North Korean family want to be sent to South Korea.

By staff and wire reports

BEIJING, China -- A North Korean family seeking asylum is spending a second night holed up in a U.N. office in Beijing.

Agency officials said they negotiated Wednesday with China over the seven North Korean asylum-seekers but there are signs the drama could drag on.

China's approach is "cautious," a diplomatic source told CNN's Lisa Rose Weaver, because both Chinese and U.N. officials have to determine the family's status and "verify" each person.

The family entered the office on Tuesday and asked for asylum in South Korea, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees regional chief Colin Mitchell told reporters.

The seven -- a couple, their two teen-age children, two grandparents and a nephew -- told the United Nations they faced persecution if they return to their homeland.

The regional representative for the agency says it would be unthinkable for the family to be returned to North Korea because they would face harsh punishment, particularly because one of the children had published a book of drawings of life in the communist state, including uniformed police torturing and shooting people.

Many North Koreans have fled their country for China and persecution is a status that could qualify them as refugees.

China's hands

AUDIO The next step for the North Korean family. 988K / 1:31 min AIFF or WAV sound   VIDEO CNN's Lisa Rose Weaver on how the story of one family sheds new light on North Korea's problems Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

But as one of North Korea's few allies, China faces an awkward choice between offending a friend or appearing inhumane just 17 days before the International Olympic Committee chooses a host for the 2008 Games.

The United Nations can grant the family refugee status, but it is up to China, which is bound by a treaty with Pyongyang to return fleeing North Koreans, to decide what will happen to them, Mitchell said.

"We can only hope that China will take into consideration this is a humanitarian issue and these people can't be returned to their country," he said.

Cramped

Mitchell said the seven were comfortable despite cramped conditions and appeared more relaxed about their situation.

U.N. staff had brought bedding and takeaway food for the family and security had been tightened.

Earlier on Wednesday, five members of the family smiled, waved and clasped their fists over their heads in a victory sign to reporters from a window of the office on the second floor of a diplomatic compound in downtown Beijing.

South Korea, which has agreed to take in the seven, had told China they should be handled gently and given asylum where they wanted, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said.

Knotty diplomacy

UNHCR official Colin Mitchell says it would be 'unthinkable' to return the family to North Korea

But they still need clearance from China, which treats those fleeing North Korea, racked by natural disasters and famine since 1995, as economic migrants to be returned to their homeland.

Anxious to prevent a wave of North Korean refugees, China has quietly shipped grain and fuel to its neighbor, while delicately promoting economic reforms in the Communist state.

"China's caught between a rock and a hard place," said one Beijing-based diplomat.

"It can't really put its relations with North Korea above the concerns of the international community," he said.

"But granting the family refugee status would open a real can of worms."

Aid groups estimate between 150,000 and 300,000 North Koreans are already scattered in the hills and plains of northeastern China and Mongolia eking out a living.

South Korean officials in Beijing say their working estimate is 10,000 to 30,000.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service said in May that 1,470 North Koreans had defected to South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War, half of them in the last five years.

The Korean peninsula was divided into the Communist North and pro-Western South in 1945. The two Koreas remain in a state of war because the war ended in a truce that has not been replaced by a peace agreement.