YANGON -- Myanmar will expel 19 North Koreans who were arrested early last month for illegally entering the military-run country, a senior police official said Thursday.

The group were trying to get to South Korea via China and Southeast Asia, an increasingly popular route for North Koreans trying to escape hunger and repression in their communist homeland, the official said.

"A court in Tachileik ordered yesterday (Wednesday) that they be expelled under the immigration act," he said, referring to an eastern Myanmar town near the Thai and Laotian border area.

The North Koreans will be sent back over the border into the area known as the Golden Triangle, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He would not say which country they would be sent to, only that it was the country from which they had entered Myanmar.

The group -- which a South Korean activist group has said includes four children -- were arrested in early December as they tried to enter Myanmar. They have been detained since then.

Many North Koreans cross China and travel through Laos and Myanmar in an effort to reach more sympathetic countries such as Thailand with hopes of eventual resettlement in South Korea.

Military-ruled Myanmar and hardline communist North Korea, both of which are severely criticized internationally for human rights abuses, restored diplomatic relations in 2007.

Myanmar severed ties with Pyongyang in 1983 following a failed assassination attempt by North Korean agents on then-South Korean president Chun Doo-Hwan during his visit to the Southeast Asian nation.

The bombing killed 17 of Chun's entourage including cabinet ministers while four Myanmar officials also died.

Myanmar, ruled by the military since 1962, and North Korea have been branded "outposts of tyranny" by the United States, which imposes sanctions on both.