ANSEONG (South Korea) - DRESSED in white or yellow t-shirts and black slacks, the dozens of people at Wednesday's ceremony looked like typical trainees for a South Korean company. But the high security at the green-fenced compound hinted at a different kind of induction programme.

They have flooded to South Korea in recent years to escape hunger and harsh political oppression in their communist homeland. Hanawon, located in the farming village Anseong, is the government facility where they go through a three-month course aimed at giving them basic knowledge to live in the South, such as computer skills and how to shop in supermarkets.

The facility has expanded as the flow of asylum seekers has picked up. It marked its 10th anniversary Wednesday.

More than 16,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the Korean War ended in 1953, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry.

Most, however, have arrived in recent years as living conditions in the North have deteriorated. Annual arrivals have reached more than 3,000, according to the Unification Ministry.

Activists claim tens of thousands of North Koreans are living in hiding in China, through which many take a long and risky land journey to Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries on their way to eventual asylum in South Korea.

South Korea has said it would accept any North Korean who wants to resettle, but is concerned that the rapid increase in arrivals could strain inter-Korean ties and complicate international efforts to resolve the issue of the North's nuclear weapons program.

Relations between the two Koreas have frayed badly since conservative South Korean President Lee Myung Bak took office in February last year with a pledge to get tough on the North and its nuclear ambitions. North Korea responded by severing most ties and suspending key joint projects. -- AP