WASHINGTON – Facing possible imprisonment and likely torture, 62 North Korean refugees are reportedly being sent back to the country they fled last month after spending three weeks in a safe house in China.

The South Korean Yonhap news agency yesterday reported that the refugees would be returned to North Korea by Chinese immigration authorities, though no confirmation was available from Beijing or the State Department. The Defense Forum Foundation, an American organization that campaigns for human rights and national security, released a statement yesterday from Seoul confirming the Yonhap report.

In the past, North Korean refugees forced to return to their country have faced torture and execution upon their arrival in the hermit kingdom. The decision appears to reverse an unacknowledged policy that allowed North Korean refugees to seek asylum by entering foreign embassies. Chinese authorities detained the refugees on October 26 at two safe houses outside of Beijing.

A State Department spokesman yesterday told The New York Sun she could not confirm the reports.

“We continue to be concerned about the suffering of the North Korean people, including those who flee the repressive conditions in North Korea,” Darla Jordan said. “We have consistently urged China to adhere to its international obligations under the 1967 protocol of refugees which it has signed and refrain from repatriating any North Koreans against their will. We have also urged China to allow international access to this vulnerable population to determine its status.”

This year, President Bush signed the North Korean Human Rights Act, which gives the Department of Homeland Security the authority to offer visas to North Koreans fleeing the country. In the past, North Koreans who escaped over the border into China have traditionally sought asylum in Beijing by forcing their way into foreign embassies in the Chinese capital.

Yonhap reported that two South Korean activists who had planned on breaking the refugees out of safe houses near Beijing are now in jail.

The Reuters news service yesterday quoted China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Zhang Qiyue, as saying, “Illegal immigration…violates laws and relevant regulations of any country and should be strictly punished.”

Activist groups have estimated that possibly as many as 200,000 North Koreans reside in China, many after fleeing the country in the mid-1990s when the country’s economic collapse precipitated a famine. During the famine, Kim Jong Il’s regime stopped food delivery to whole provinces. Human rights organizations and refugees have said that in the past North Korean soldiers would look to bring back refugees who had fled over the border and bring them back in prison lines, connecting the refugees by chains threaded through their noses and cheeks.

In an interview yesterday, the executive director for the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Debra Liang-Fenton, said China’s reported decision was “deplorable.”

“We have reports from numerous refugees we’ve interviewed, once they have gone to China they have broken the law in North Korea. Once they are repatriated into detention camps, they are questioned for hours at a time and then sent to a political prison camp where they are often executed.”

The national director of public policy for the Wilberforce Forum, Mariam Bell, said, “We’ve got Auschwitz-like conditions in North Korea. Countries like China who are complicit by turning away refugees who are just seeking freedom…are part of the problem. We say never again and we should mean it.”

Reuters quotes the president of the Defense Forum Foundation president, Suzanne Scholte, as saying, “China knows that they will be executed or they will be put in political prisoner camps for the crime of leaving the country.” She also said, “The Olympic Committee should change its venue for the Beijing Olympics, which celebrates good will towards neighbors and not have it in a country which terrorizes neighbors that come to them starving and helpless.”

The refugee crisis comes as pressure is mounting for the new Bush administration to renew multilateral negotiations with North Korea. On Sunday, President Roh of South Korea called President Bush and urged him to renew his efforts to persuade North Korea through six-party talks to abandon its nuclear program. These talks were scheduled for September but were cancelled.