A South Korean Christian group working to help North Korean asylum-seekers says a large number of Northern defectors in China are likely to soon be repatriated to their communist homeland to face prosecution.

The group, Durihana, claims that 50 to 60 North Korean defectors were recently deported to China from an unspecified Southeast Asian country, and are expected to be forcibly sent back to North Korea.

The civic group said the mass deportation took place shortly after some four-hundred North Korean asylum-seekers arrived in South Korea late last month in the largest single defection since the division of the Korean Peninsula.

A South Korean government official said Seoul is not in a position to confirm such claims.