Forty-four North Korean men, women and children scaled the walls of the Canadian embassy in Beijing yesterday in a likely bid for political asylum, an embassy spokesman said. It was one of the largest groups ever to burst into a diplomatic compound in the Chinese capital in a desperate attempt to escape poverty and oppression in their Stalinist home country. "It's a group of 44," said embassy spokesman Ian Burchett. "There are women, men and children among them." "But we still don't know if the group is solely comprised of North Koreans." He said the people in the group had not yet made clear what they wanted, and that the embassy was in the process of communicating with them. Other embassy staff said that they had been told they were North Koreans who had scaled the fence around the embassy early afternoon yesterday. Footage of the break-in seen on CNN, showed people, some dressed in military fatigues and construction hats, hurriedly scaling ladders and throwing themselves over the fence. A dozen or so police were seen milling around outside the compound mid-afternoon, while a ladder was lying on the sidewalk about 50 metres from the main gate. "If there are up to 40 people, it usually means that it was organised and quite often in these kind of cases some non-governmental organisations are involved," one East Asian diplomat said. In recent years, scores of North Koreans have won political asylum in South Korea after they successfully scaled walls of diplomatic missions in China. Following that incident, China's foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan accused rights groups of aiding the refugees in breaking into foreign missions. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Police guard a ladder-like object outside the Canadian embassy in Beijing. (AFP)