N. Korean defectors holed up in China arrive in Seoul

Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing a Seoul diplomatic source, said they arrived in the South Sunday after China changed its policy of refusing to let them depart AFP reported.

China was also considering allowing the departure of seven others trapped for at least two years in South Korea's consulates in Shenyang and Shanghai.

China arrests and repatriates fugitives from North Korea, considering them to be economic migrants rather than potential refugees. 

The five who were allowed to leave Beijing include a daughter of a former South Korean soldier who was taken prisoner during the 1950-53 war and her two children, including a 17-year-old boy, Dong-A Ilbo newspaper said.

They had spent almost three years in the Beijing mission.

Seoul's foreign ministry declined to comment.

Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed to tackle the thorny issue of North Korean fugitives during a summit with the South's leader Lee Myung-Bak last week.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled poverty or repression in their impoverished homeland, almost all of them across the border to China.

Some hide out among -- or marry into -- the ethnic Korean community in China's Northeast. Others try to travel on to Southeast Asian nations before flying to Seoul.