A North Korean defector has opened up about the grim experiences he endured in his homeland.
Timothy Cho, who managed to flee North Korea, has shared some stark truths about life in the isolated country. Among the harrowing experiences he recounted was being forced to witness public executions during his childhood.
Timothy’s parents were educators at a high school and kept history books at home while he was growing up.
“When I was young I loved to read, and when I was reading my father said ‘these things you’re reading you cannot share anything what you’ve read from home when you’re outside’,” he recounted to LADbible Stories.
Timothy was keenly aware of the severe penalties for violating North Korea’s stringent laws, having been made to attend public executions at only 11 years old.
“We were all told to come to the public execution place to watch it hundreds, a crowd of people gathered, it was specifically told all children come out and see it at the front of the crowd, children,” he explained.
“And the man tied up on the post, he was a criminal because he helped, his crime was he helped three North Korean women to cross the border to China.”
He provided a detailed account of the execution method, revealing that the man was shot by a firing squad.
“So three policemen came quite a short distance, each one was having an, what is it, AK-47, and each police had three bullets,” he explained.
In many firing squad executions, shooters may not know whose bullet was lethal due to the use of blank rounds. However, this was not the case in Timothy’s account, where bullets were deliberately aimed at specific body parts.
“The first bullet it went into the eye,” he said. “The eyes were covered and the bullet popped out the eyes.
“And second three bullets went into the belly button where the belly was tied up as well, and the third was on the knee.”
After the execution, Timothy described the swift manner in which the body was dealt with.
“Now the body was falling into a whole that was prepared, and underneath there was something that could wrap up the dead body,” he said. “That was public execution.”
Timothy was left without his parents at the age of nine when they fled North Korea to avoid political persecution, leaving him to survive alone and face starvation.
Though he managed to escape, he was captured by the Chinese military. After enduring torture for his defection, he managed to flee again, eventually securing his freedom.