HANOI (AFP) -- Diplomats asked the UN refugee agency for help as they scrambled Wednesday to deal with five North Koreans who scaled a fence into the Indonesian Embassy in Hanoi seeking asylum.

The UN agency was dealing with the group -- four women and one man -- holed up inside the embassy compound in downtown Hanoi, where security outside has been stepped up with extra police, a South Korean diplomat said.
""If there is a request for cooperation from the Indonesian Embassy, we'll comply with it, and if the entrants are confirmed as defectors, we'll handle them according to international practices.""
The South Korean diplomat here told AFP that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was ""dealing with the matter to check the intentions of the North Koreans.
""If they ask for South Korea's help, then we will intervene,"" the diplomat said under cover of anonymity.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Desra Percaya said that the group -- including three women in their 20s and one in her 50s -- had brought nothing with them and were not carrying any identification papers.
He said the UN officials were set to meet the North Koreans later Wednesday and take them to a UNHCR shelter.
Indonesian diplomats at the Hanoi Embassy have refused to comment.
The state-controlled press in Vietnam did not report on the incident, which has left the communist country in a diplomatic bind as it has relations with both North and South Korea