SEOUL -- A South Korean court has blocked plans by immigration officials to deport a Korean-Chinese man because he is HIV-positive, court officials said Friday.

The Seoul Administrative Court said in a ruling announced Thursday that such an action would deter others from seeking HIV tests, the officials told AFP.

The national human rights commission had appealed to the court last month to halt the deportation, which it said would violate human rights.

The 32-year-old ethnic Korean was invited to Korea by his mother last year and wished to apply for permanent residency. But he was ordered by the immigration office to leave after testing HIV-positive.

The man, from China's Jilin province, filed a lawsuit against the order.

"There is litle possibility that the HIV virus is transmissible through normal contact," said judge Chun Sung-Soo in his ruling, which noted that the man legally entered Korea and had no one to care for him in China.

"Potential HIV patients could shun HIV tests if people believed that they would be unfairly treated just because of the HIV infection."