A North Korean defector has opened up about the traumatic conditions he endured growing up in one of the world’s most closed-off states.
Timothy Cho, now a UK-based human rights activist and Conservative politician, has described the brutal realities of daily life in North Korea, including being forced to witness a public execution when he was just 11 years old.
Cho has previously said that his parents, both high school teachers, fled North Korea while he was still a child, leaving him to survive largely on his own. In later interviews, he has recalled famine, street life and repeated attempts to escape the country, experiences that shaped his campaigning against dictatorship and in support of democratic freedoms.
As a boy, Timothy lived in a household where both of his parents worked as high school teachers. His father also kept history books at home, something that came with serious risks in such a tightly controlled society.
“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 said that warning stayed with him, especially because he already understood how severe the consequences could be for anyone accused of breaking the law.
At the age of 11, Timothy was ordered to attend a public execution alongside a large crowd, with children deliberately placed at the front.
“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 said.
“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.”
Public executions have long been reported as part of North Korea’s system of intimidation. Human rights groups have said such punishments are used to terrorise communities and discourage people from seeking outside information, breaking censorship rules or attempting to flee the country. Recent reports have also alleged that North Koreans have been executed for distributing or watching foreign media, including South Korean TV shows and films.
Timothy then recalled the killing itself, saying 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 said.
In some firing squad executions, measures are sometimes used to ensure no individual shooter can be certain they fired the fatal shot. Timothy said that was not what happened in the execution he witnessed.
According to his account, the rounds were aimed at specific parts of the man’s body.
“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.”
He also described what happened immediately after the shooting, saying the body was removed without delay.
“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.”
Cho has said he was later separated from his parents, lived through hunger and hardship, and was eventually detained and tortured after trying to defect. He later managed to escape again and has since spoken widely about North Korean human rights abuses.
His testimony comes amid ongoing international concern about the regime’s punishment system, with rights campaigners warning that public trials, executions and the threat of imprisonment remain central tools of control in North Korea.
Timothy said his parents fled North Korea when he was nine after learning they were facing political persecution, forcing him to survive alone and battle hunger on the streets.
Although he eventually escaped the country, he said he was later captured by Chinese soldiers and tortured over his defection. He ultimately managed to flee again and reach freedom.