CHINESE TEENS VANISH AT LAX; 32 VISITING STUDENTS MAY HAVE DEFECTED.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer

Thirty-two Chinese teen-agers disappeared from Los Angeles International Airport on Monday, skipping a flight home to Shanghai in what authorities suspect was either a mass defection or a serious mix-up in travel plans.

The teens, ages 14 to 17, had spent the past monthtudying English at the University of Redlands and were due to board a China Eastern flight at 1 p.m., police said.

But when their chartered bus pulled to the departure deck at LAX about 10:30 a.m., it was met by several men who took the students' passports, packed their luggage and led the teens away in a caravan of four to five vans and sport-utility vehicles.

``It appears that this was a very well orchestrated effort to remain here in the United States,'' said Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Lt. Anthony Alba. ``It could be a defection or it could be someone crossed their wires in terms of where these kids should have been.''

Witnesses told police that no force or coercion was used to get the kids to leave the airport.

None of the teens had sought asylum as of Monday night and the LAPD was treating the disappearance as 32 individual missing persons cases, Alba said.

``The students all decided to stay in the United States and chose to miss their flight,'' said LAmdr. David Kalish. ``They had their passports and luggage when they were escorted away by several Asian males in vehicles.''

Zhengquan Liang, Chinese consul in Los Angeles, said he knew nothing about the teens' disappearance and was unsure what action his government might take in response.

``It's very unusual,'' Liang said.

A female chaperon who had been with the students alerted airport authorities when the teens left. At first, police suspected a kidnapping and searched the upper level of the Tom Bradley International Terminal for them.

``We feel confident that it was not a mass kidnapping, otherwise you would have had kids running and screaming and trying to resist,'' Alba said. ``This was a very organized move from one vehicle to another. Their luggage was loaded and their passports were handed over. They were obviously on their way to some specific location.''

The search for the 18 girls and 14 boys, all of whom hail from Shanghai or surrounding areas, was handled by thPD's Juvenile Section in conjunction with officials from the U.S. State Department and U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The students were in the United States for an intensive, four-week English-language program sponsored by New Jersey-based ELS Language Center. The company holds similar classes at colleges throughout the United States, catering to teens and adults from across the world.

Each of the Chinese teens had been staying with a host family in Redlands and the youths were heavily restricted in terms of where they could go, said University of Redlands spokeswoman Linda Granell.

The students were allowed one field trip during their stay in Los Angeles - to Universal Studios, she said.

Granell said the students gave no sign to instructors, other school officials or their host families that they wanted to stay in the United States.

``There was nothing to indicate that there was anything amiss,'' Granell said.

In an unrelated incident at the airport Mon the lower level of the Tom Bradley International Terminal had to be evacuated at 11:30 a.m. when police found an unattended bag that was considered suspicious.

About 800 people on four incoming flights that had docked at the terminal had to stay aboard the aircraft for about an hour as the LAPD bomb squad investigated the package, said airport spokeswoman Cora Fossett. The bag was not a bomb.