CHINA URGES CALM IN ASYLUM DISPUTE.

Byline: Patrick E. Tyler The New York Times

Facing a diplomatic nightmare, the Chinese authorities pleaded Thursday for calm on the Korean peninsula and played for time as they threw a cordon of troops around a South Korean Embassy building where a stalwart of North Korea's government has taken refuge, apparently in an attempt to defect to Seoul.

A senior South Korean Foreign Ministry official arrived here Thursday to begin what may be protracted negotiations to win safe passage out of China for Hwang Jang-yop, 72, an ideological theorist of North Korea's hard-line government. If reports are confirmed, Hwang would be the highest ranking North Korean leader to flee the isolated and beleaguered regime in Pyongyang.

Hwang's case is extraordinary not only because of his rank, but also because the defection drama was playing itself out in the streets of the Chinese capital.

The case underscores Beijing's divided loyalties between its staunch Communist allies in North Korea and its newfound capitalist friends and investors in the South.

Wednesday, Hwang, a thin, bespectacled man who was passing through Beijing on the way home from a conference in Japan, walked out of the North Korean Embassy here, accompanied by an aide, on the pretext of a shopping excursion. Minutes later they arrived at South Korea's consulate on a leafy side street in another section of Beijing's diplomatic quarter. So far, Hwang has not been seen in public.

When the first reports of possible defection appeared, North Korea protested that Hwang was on his way home by train. Later the government said he must have been kidnapped and threatened unspecified ``countermeasures'' if he was not returned. Rumors that North Korean security officers were circling the South Korean Embassy added to the alarm in the Chinese capital and led to the heightened security.

Despite South Korea's enthusiasm to usher home such a prized defector, there was no indication that China's leaders were willing to entertain the notion of a quick escape. In fact, it was not clear that the South Korean envoy, Kim Ha Jung, had succeeded in meeting with Chinese officials.

Instead, Foreign Minister Qian Qichen of China, attending an Asian ministers conference in Singapore, was scheduled to hold talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Yoo Chong-ha today.

In the meantime, a Chinese government spokesman in Beijing issued a brief statement saying, ``It is hoped that the parties concerned'' will ``treat the matter calmly and handle it properly in order to benefit the maintenance of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.''

The Chinese pointed out that they had not been informed in advance of Hwang's transit through China and that an investigation was under way. China has a number of agreements with North Korea to repatriate undocumented aliens or immigrants, although this case is more complicated.