Twenty-nine people, believed to be North Koreans seeking asylum, broke into a Japanese school in Beijing on Wednesday by climbing on stools and cutting through the wire perimeter fence.
The Japanese embassy said the 15 women, 11 men and three children had been taken to the consulate section and Chinese police and the Foreign Ministry had been informed.
"We are trying to find out who they are. It seems to us they are North Koreans," an embassy spokesman said. "We will decide what to do from a humanitarian point of view according to their wishes."
Officials at the Beijing Japanese School in the north-east of the city did not comment on the break-in, but workmen wearing hard hats were trying to fix a hole in the wire fence measuring about a metre (three feet) high and 1.5 metres wide.
Nearby were four fold-up stools and a pair of wirecutters. Access to the fence is 100 yards (metres) across en empty lot.
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