Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) _ China urged the Canadian Embassy on Thursday to hand over 44 possible North Korean

asylum-seekers, while officials said nine North Koreans who entered an American school in Shanghai were handed over to Chinese police. Assistant Foreign Minister Shen Guofang said the group would be handled in line with international law and "the spirit of humanitarianism" if they were handed over. However, he didn't give any indication of their fate.

About 45 suspected North Koreans climbed over a wall into the Canadian embassy in Beijing yesterday, the latest in a rash of diplomatic mission break-ins by people seeking asylum outside the isolated Stalinist country.

The asylum seekers used ladders to scale a wall of the compound which is topped by sharp spikes, a police officer said.

"All were successful except for one man, who was taken away by police," said the officer, who was on traffic duty outside the embassy. Korea's Yonhap news agency said there were about 45 people

Canadian Diplomats were trying to confirm their identities and nationality, but the spokesman said at least some were North Korean.

In Shanghai, the group of nine North Koreans entered the American School on Monday and were handed over to police, who didn't give any assurance about what might happen to them, according to a U.S. Consulate official and a school employee. The American School in Shanghai lacks any diplomatic status, unlike embassies, which by treaty are foreign territory beyond the reach of Chinese authorities.

Such asylum bids have become common in China, with North Koreans who are fleeing famine and repression at home rushing into embassies, schools and other foreign facilities.

China has allowed hundreds of North Korean asylum-seekers to leave for South Korea. Despite a treaty that obliges Beijing to send them home, it hasn't done so in cases that become public.

Earlier this month, a group of 29 people claiming to be North Korean asylum seekers forced their way through a fence into a Japanese school in the Chinese capital.

Since 2002, hundreds of asylum seekers from North Korea have broken into foreign embassies and consulates in China, hoping to secure passage to South Korea.

Activists estimate that as many as 100,000 North Korean refugees are camped out or in hiding, mostly in China and increasingly in Southeast Asia, after fleeing poverty and repression in their homeland.

The group at the Canadian Embassy was made up of five families and included an escapee from a North Korean prison and a woman who had been a political prisoner, the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported on its Web site. It said one 66-year-old woman in the group escaped once before from the North in 1997 but was caught and sent home. Last year, a total of 1,285 North Koreans reached South Korea, up from 1,140 in 2002.