BUNG KAN: Police on Monday detained five North Korean women and three children in Muang district who admitted sneaking in from Laos after travelling through China.
Local residents informed police after seeing them walking on Highway 212 (Bung Kan-Nong Khai) in Ban Khok Kong, tambon Khok Kong, about 6.30am on Monday. Police then detained the women and the three children, aged 3-6 years, and took them to Muang Bung Kan police station for questioning.
The migrants said through an interpreter that they had fled North Korea and entered China. Then they travelled on a bus to Laos and then by ferry across the Mekong River to Bung Kan province.
About 30 North Korean people had been caught after crossing the river from Laos to Bung Kan this year, according to media reports, around 20 of them last month.
They have told police similar stories - that they travelled through Yunnan province of China and northern Laos before taking ferries across the river from Laos to Ban Khok Kong in Bung Kan.
Then they walked in public so that officials rounded them up and would arrange for them to travel on to South Korea, their intended destination.