The Foreign Ministry Wednesday summoned a Chinese envoy to protest both the arrest of four North Korean defectors at an international school in Beijing and the use of force against South Korean diplomats who tried to intervene.

Chinese police on Tuesday arrested four North Korean defectors who entered a South Korean international school in the Chinese capital. Four South Korean diplomats were dispatched to the scene, and two were briefly physically restrained by the police while trying to stop the arrest, a ministry official said.

The ministry called in a Chinese embassy official, whose identity was not released, to demand the release of the North Korean defectors while filing complaint over the use of force against South Korean diplomats in Beijing.

The Chinese police did not appear to have "intentionally" used physical force against the diplomats, the ministry official said, but added the incident has caused serious concerns about the safety of Korean diplomats stationed in the Chinese capital.

"We immediately filed a complaint with the Chinese Foreign Ministry over the incident on Tuesday while demanding the North Korean defectors be handed over to us based on their intention," he said.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans are believed to be hiding in China after fleeing their hard-pressed communist homeland, hoping to defect to South Korea.

China sees North Korean defectors as illegal economic migrants, not as refugees, and deports them back to their communist homeland where they allegedly face harsh punishment.

SEOUL, Oct. 10 (Yonhap)