December 15, 2009
BANGKOK (AFP) - Fourteen North Korean refugees, including a six-year-old boy, were arrested in northern Thailand Monday and charged with illegal entry, police said.
The group of five men, eight women and the child were held in Phayao town, travelling by bus from the northern province of Chiang Rai and bound for Bangkok, local police lieutenant colonel Chayanond Ounkaew told AFP.
They were questioned by police before being charged with illegal entry, he said.
North Koreans are increasingly fleeing their impoverished hardline communist homeland, partly because of continued food shortages.
Virtually all North Koreans seeking to leave their country cross into China, but they risk forced repatriation if caught there, so they often travel on to Southeast Asia in the hope of eventual resettlement in South Korea or the West.
