South Korea has granted refugee status to two Yemeni nationals staying on Jeju Island.

The Jeju branch of the Korea Immigration Service said Friday that it has reviewed asylum requests of 74 refugees from Yemen and, for the first time, decided to grant refugee status to two of them. 

The immigration office decided to permit 50 of them to stay in South Korea on humanitarian grounds and rejected the asylum requests of 22 others.

The two Yemeni nationals who secured refugee status are reportedly journalists who received death threats from Yemen's rebel forces known as Houthis for their stories critical of them.
 
Those affected by Friday’s decision are part of a larger group of 484 Yemenis, most of whom arrived in Jeju on flights from Malaysia earlier this year. Of those, two of them have now been granted refugee status while 412 can stay in South Korea on humanitarian grounds.