By Jack Kim and Ju-min Park
SEOUL (Reuters) -South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;said on Friday it had protested to&nbsp;China&nbsp;over&nbsp;the&nbsp;suspected&nbsp;forced repatriation of a large number of&nbsp;North&nbsp;Koreans, who rights groups say face imprisonment and abuse at the hands of&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korean authorities.
Any forced repatriation of&nbsp;North&nbsp;Koreans goes against international norms and&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;viewed it as regrettable, Koo Byoung-sam, a spokesman for&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea's Unification Ministry, told a media briefing.
"It appears to be true that a large number of&nbsp;North&nbsp;Koreans in&nbsp;China's three&nbsp;northeast provinces have been repatriated to the&nbsp;North," Koo said.
South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;had been unable to determine the number of people involved and whether there were defectors among them.
"The&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korean government regrets the situation and raised this matter with the Chinese side in a serious manner, emphasizing our position," he said.
Former&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korean diplomat Tae Yong-ho, who is now a member of&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea's parliament, issued a statement calling on the foreign ministry to summon the Chinese ambassador to&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;as a form of protest.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday there were no "so-called defectors" in&nbsp;China, when asked about a report Beijing had deported about 600&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korean defectors this week despite an appeal by&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea.
On Friday, the same spokesperson said&nbsp;China&nbsp;would "continue to appropriately handle" the matter according to humanitarian principles as well as domestic and international law.
China&nbsp;has never recognised fleeing&nbsp;North&nbsp;Koreans as defectors and instead calls them "economic migrants".
South&nbsp;Korea's government and international rights organisations have said defectors who are deported back to the&nbsp;North&nbsp;face harsh punishment including detention at labour camps where they are subject to dangerous treatment and conditions.
Human Rights Watch said Chinese authorities had forced back more than 500&nbsp;North&nbsp;Koreans, most of them women, and it called on governments to denounce the expulsion by Beijing.
The&nbsp;North&nbsp;Koreans were taken in vehicle convoys on Monday night&nbsp;over&nbsp;five separate border crossings into the&nbsp;North, the rights group said, citing a missionary with contacts in the&nbsp;North&nbsp;and&nbsp;China&nbsp;who worked to help defectors.
A&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korean who defected to&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;in 2001 said a cousin of his, who had lived in&nbsp;China&nbsp;for 25 years, and had a daughter with a Chinese man, was believed to be among those deported this week.
The defector, Kim Hyuk, told Reuters his cousin, Kim Cheol-ok, was detained by Chinese authorities in Jilin province in April and had in recent days called her daughter from prison to say she was about to be sent to back to&nbsp;North&nbsp;Korea.
(Reporting by Jack Kim, Ju-min Park and Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by Eduardo Baptista in Beijing;Editing by Ed Davies, Robert Birsel and Miral Fahmy)

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South Korea protests to China over suspected North Korea repatriations