Timothy Cho, who recently stood as a Conservative candidate for the Heatons North ward in Stockport, has shared harrowing details of his childhood in North Korea, where he witnessed public executions and lived homeless after his parents defected.
Early Life and Abandonment
Born in Onsong, a town in the northernmost part of North Korea in the 1980s, Cho’s early memories include bowing to portraits of the ruling Kim family each morning before school. When he was nine, his parents—both teachers—fled the country, leaving him behind. Initially taken in by his grandmother, the brutal famine of the mid-1990s forced her to turn him out, and he became homeless.
Cho described his struggle for survival on the streets: “I was lucky how I survived living with all the homeless children. Some of these kids, they are stealing food, they are homeless kids. And people who are stealing food on the market, they snatch the food and run away but people then come to catch you, beating you. But even when they are in the middle of the beating, they are still swallowing the food.”
Witnessing Public Executions
At around age 11, Cho was forced to attend a public execution. “Watching this public execution I was only around 11, but all people in that village were forced to watch it. We were told to sit at the front of the crowd where three men came and shot the man tied up on the post and each policeman had three bullets and all of these nine bullets goes into three parts of the body. And each time it goes into the cobbled part, especially when it goes onto your brain, it pops out.”
Escape and Detention
At 17, Cho attempted to escape to China, where he saw people wearing jeans and having different hair colours—things he believed would lead to execution in North Korea. He was captured and sent back, spending time in a detention centre with underground cells. He later escaped again and eventually reached the UK in 2008.
In the UK, Cho studied English in Bolton, earned a politics degree from Salford University, and a master’s from Liverpool University. He now lives in Heaton Norris, Stockport, with his wife and two children, and works as the Secretariat for the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea.
Ongoing Executions in North Korea
Cho’s revelations come weeks after a report by the Transitional Justice Working Group documented 144 known execution and death sentencing cases in North Korea, many involving public executions. The report noted that executions soared during the Covid pandemic, with victims beaten with hammers or shot, and some capital punishments were for consuming South Korean music and films.
