The defectors claimed the North has developed missiles with a range of 6,000 kilometers (3,750 miles) which could hit targets as far as California, South Korea's conservative Chosun Daily said.

They also took with them a treasure of intelligence on the North's missile development, including samples of rocket fuel, according to the report, which could not be confirmed.

The trio were identified as Im Ki-Song, 59, who worked at a missile base in Ryanggang Province, his son Im Hak-Jin, 31, a missile research engineer, and nephew Kim Song-Su, 32, company commander of the North's special forces.

The newspaper failed to elaborate on senior Im's rank but carried a photo of Im and his son. It was unclear when and where the picture was taken.

The three escaped the North in December and made their way through the Chinese cities of Yanji, Changchun and Beijing to Shanghai where they boarded a flight to the United States in mid-January with assistance from the US government, the Chosun said.

While in China, they posed as Chinese nationals and were helped by acquaintances, it said.

South Korean officials said they had no information on the reported defection. "We are checking the report," said a spokesman for the National Intelligence Service (NIS), South Korea's spy agency.

A ranking Seoul official told Yonhap News Agency that there had been a rumor circulating about the defection of the trio since late last year.

Im Ki-Song, a widower, was said to have decided to leave the North last year when his relatives began falling victim to Pyongyang's Stalinist-style purge, Chosun said.

Im, who studied in Moscow in the 1960s, was one of the North's few experts on missile and rocket development technology and once assigned to a Chinese missile base in Jilin Province in the mid-1990s, the newspaper said.

The communist North stunned the world in August 1998 by successfully test-firing a three-stage missile, which intelligence officials believe was medium-range Taepodong 1, which flew over Japan and fell into the Pacific.

NIS reports in Seoul suggested that Pyongyang is deploying Rodong 1 missiles with a range of some 1,000 kilometers and developing Taepodong 1 and long-range Taepodong 2 missiles with a range of 2,000 to 4,500 kilometers.

"North Korea is thought to have completed the development of Taepodong 1 after in the light of its 1998 test-launch," the NIS said in reports on North Korea, posted on in its web site.

North Korea agreed in September to suspend missile tests when it struck a landmark accord with the United States, under which Washington in return agreed to ease decades-old economic sanctions against starving Pyongyang.

Last month, North Korea and the United States also decided to convene a crucial working-level meeting in New York later this month to prepare for a historic visit by a high-level North Korean official to Washington in March.

South Korean foreign minister Lee Joung-Binn has said Pyongyang is now ready to accept new US proposals, under which it will stop developing missiles and nuclear weapons in return for better ties with the West.

Copyright 1999 AFP. All rights reserved. The material on this page is provided by AFP and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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