Radio Free Asia reported Tuesday that North Korean workers who had been dispatched to Russia are refusing to return to their homeland and are preparing to defect to a third country.

The radio station quoted 'Exodus 21,' a North Korean defectors' support group, as saying that the Korean laborers, who had been working on farms or construction sites in the Russian regions of Siberia and the Maritime Provinces, are refusing to follow orders from Pyongyang to return home upon the expiry of their three-year labor contracts.

The North Koreans have reportedly formed semi-refugee camps comprising dozens or even hundreds of members leading a collective life in the foreign land.

An official with the support group, only identified by surname Shin, said that although life in Russia is far more free and comfortable than living in the communist North, some North Koreans there have expressed the wish to defect to the capitalist South.