Interview

Change

Freedom of Belief

S&U interviews

3 October 2024

9 min read

Don’t send us back, North Korean escapee tells China

Timothy Cho hopes to help those still trying to escape.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A conference speaker at a podium against a backdrop of blue.

Timothy Cho.

GSHRD.

The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has recently stated that North Korea must be held responsible for the grave human rights violations that they have carried out, suggesting that such justice could be secured through the International Criminal Court. In the report, they detail serious human right violations which occurred between July 2023 and May 2024, many of which are tied to a serious escalation in the repression of freedom of thought and belief. Such repression makes North Korea that most dangerous country to be a Christian in 2024, sitting at number one on the World Watch List.

I don’t know about you, but I find North Korea hard to get my head around.

And so, I was utterly captivated, completely horrified, and generally left speechless by Timothy Cho’s story of escaping North Korea, at the age of just seventeen. Now, living in the UK and working for the religious charity, Open Doors, as well as lobbying cross-party parliamentarians, Timothy is able to shed a rare light on the realities involved in living in, and leaving, North Korea.

Would you be able to tell me a little bit about how you managed to leave North Korea?
I actually escaped twice and was imprisoned four times, three of those imprisonments were in China and one in North Korea. I was sent back, along with the seventeen other North Korean refugees, while we were trying to escape.

During my first escape, I crossed the border to China and met a Christian missionary guy. He tried to help me cross into China safely, so I followed him to his house. I saw a Bible and a cross and realised that it was a Christian missionary’s house.

That was very scary for me, I thought he was brainwashed. I believed that Christians were kidnapping North Korean children and selling them into trafficking. And so, when I saw a few children in that house, my legs were shaking.

I thought the Bible was cursed.

And so I escaped from the house. I did not regard meeting that man as an opportunity provided by God. I ran away from it.

And I was then arrested at the Mongolian border with seventeen other refugees as we tried to cross into Mongolia. North Koreans, we’re born without a passport. We don’t know how to leave the country. We’re told that you should never leave the country, so, at the Mongolian border, all eighteen of us were arrested by Chinese military. There were two women in the group, a mother and a daughter, they quickly took something out of their backpack and buried it in the sand. I asked them later what it was, they told me that it was a Bible. It was too dangerous to be sent back to North Korea with it in their possession.

And we were sent back to North Korea.

I experienced horrific crimes; terrible things were happening right in front of my eyes. I still live with the trauma of it now. But I survived that horrific experience in the North Korean prison, I was the only one among the eighteen of us who got out of there.

And then you attempted to escape a second time?

Yes, by then I couldn't walk properly because of the terrible things that had happened in prison. It was tragic.

I considered going to the Mongolian border again, but I was massively traumatised from the previous attempt. So, I went to Shanghai. I heard someone could help me to cross the fence into an American International School there, where I hoped I could get support and hopefully get out of China.

So, I met with a few other North Korean refugees in Shanghai and we managed to get into the school with a piece of paper that read: ‘we are North Korean refugees. Please help us’.

But the school couldn’t help us and the Chinese police arrived to forcibly remove us. In front of hundreds of students, we were beaten and dragged away.
We were sent to the International Shanghai Prison.

That was my fourth imprisonment.

They were going to send me back to North Korea a second time. And there was no way I thought I would survive that. I would have been executed.

So, what happened?

In my cell were seven other inmates, all from different countries. As I was crying every night not eating properly, one of my inmates asked me - why are you crying every night?

They had never met a North Korean person, of course. So, they were very curious about me. The guy who came to me and asked what was wrong was a South Korean gangster - so we spoke the same language, and I was able to explain to him that I was probably going to be executed.
Everyone looked quite shocked - and they all asked me if they could pray for me. I said yes, but I didn’t actually know what prayer was. Every one of them had a different religion but the south Korean man brought me a Christian Bible and asked me, ‘have you ever read this book?’

Again, this was a book that I was terrified of, and so my legs were shaking. I told him that I had never read it, and that I didn’t want to read it. I told him that it was cursed

But he said, ‘you probably have some time here in this prison – why don’t you read it. It might give you some comfort’.
Then he told me that I could pray to God for my survival. I was so desperate, you can imagine – you’re in the darkest prison, thinking that you’re about to be killed. I had nothing to lose. But I didn't how to pray, so I asked him - How do you pray? And he told me that you simply say Amen at the end of your wishes. That's how I learned how to pray.

So, my first ever prayer, right in that moment was ‘God, I don't want to be killed. Amen’.
And I don't want to go back to North Korea. I want to get up from this prison. I prayed hundreds of these kinds of prayers. Very short. Very desperate. I wanted to survive.
And, eventually, praying that many times a day gave me a feeling of comfort. I began to lean on it. I was holding it like a rope. I was desperately praying, with everything within me, for weeks and weeks. But nothing was happening.

At first, I kind of thought that God was a man, like a very powerful man. The kind who could arrive on a helicopter and destroy the prison building. Like in an action film, that’s the only reference of escape I had. But nothing was happening. So, I told the gangster who gave me the Bible that God obviously doesn't exist. He lied to me.

Time was ticking. I was desperate.

I was a 17 year old boy, I didn’t understand God at all, but all I wanted was to survive.
About eight weeks later, two men visited me in the prison. At first, I thought they were from North Korea, finally forcing me back. But it turns out they were diplomats. One South Korean guy and one Westerner. They told me that China had made the very unusual decision to deport us to the Philippines with a diplomatic passport, not to North Korea.

This was completely out of the blue. I never expected that this would happen. That was the first and the last time that China had officially deported a group of North Korean refugees to a third-party country instead of sending them back to North Korea.

As it turns out, one of the school children at the International American school in Shanghai wrote to a local journalist about us because she was so traumatised at how she had seen us beaten and arrested. At the same time, other witnesses had written statements of what they witnessed and testified that what they saw in that moment was a crime against humanity.

This then caught the attention of the BBC, Washington Post and CNN, media outlets in Germany, South Korea, Japan. They all told our story and campaigned on our behalf, pressuring the Chinese Government. Then, many Christian and human rights groups watched that news. They protested in front of Chinese embassies all over the world.

I remember thinking - oh, this is how God has operated. I saw it straight away. Right in that moment, I needed to thank him.

One of the Bible scriptures I still remember reading during that prison stay was – ‘I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.’

I didn’t grow up with parents. They left, escaped to China when I was nine. I survived without parents, even though I was picking food on the floor and had no education. I suffered and struggled. And I complained about that a lot to God, even after he had rescued me and given me freedom. I had a lot of trauma, anger, hatred, all that. So many times I cried out to God, I shouted at him, I asked him – ‘why didn’t you leave me to die on the street? Then I wouldn’t have gone through all of this suffering.’
Every time when I prayed that to him, the only sentence he tells me in response is – ‘I love you, son’.

That’s an astonishing story. Thank you for sharing that. Since you’ve become a Christian, left North Korea and gained your freedom, what have you subsequently learnt about the hidden, underground, Christians in North Korea?

That my grandmother was a Christian, my father's mother. But she couldn’t ever share her faith with me.

Also, that Korea had experienced a spiritual revival in 1907. Evangelism swept through Korea at that time, and millions on people gathered in Pyongyang, which is North Korea today. Missionaries came over, even Billy Graham’s father-in-law went there as a missionary. They came, built schools, hospitals, universities, they were teaching English. In fact, members of the royal family were baptised by Billy Graham’s father-in-law.

My grandmother was a part of that revival generation of a Christians. The church has survived, underground, through decades of North Korean communist dictators.

People start reading this book (the Bible), and they find treasure in there, our daily life is in there. There are stories of economic hardship, persecution, suffering, oppression, anger, hatred. But to be found with the Bible is incredibly dangerous. People who smuggle the Bible are executed. When I was eleven, I watched a public execution. When they’re executing someone, they force the entire village to come out and watch it, and they force you to take your children. In fact, children have to sit on the front row. So, the man I saw executed when I was eleven, he was shot – first in the eyes, then the stomach, then the knees. I remember, my friends and I went and collected some of the bullet shells that were left on the floor. We thought it was normal. That man was accused of being a spy because he was found with religious materials.

They're very particularly against Christianity because the message liberates people.

Finally, this recent report from the UN Secretary General – you say that his recommendations are ‘noble aims’ but that they don’t quite go far enough. What would you like to see happen to bring about increased safety for the people in, and trying to leave, North Korea?

I’m now a Christian and human rights lobbyist, I encourage MPs to do something. The UK has always been influential in holding the flag for freedom of belief, in particular. So, what I suggest is that we have conversations with Chinese diplomats. China deported me to a third-party country; they can actually do that. They have the authority in their hands to make that decision. They don’t have to send people back to North Korea. They could even send them to South Korea.

Instead, hundreds of thousands of people are arrested and sent back to North Korea, even though China knows that these people will end up in prison camps. If they’re Christians, they’ll be executed.

So, I have a few recommendations. But this is something that the UK government can urge the Chinese government to do.

Essay

Change

Community

Justice

15 May 2024

8 min read

Blackpool: how to make somewhere home

From tents to a town-wide regeneration, Blackpool’s hopeful placemaking.

John Clifton

John is a Salvation Army captain serving in Blackpool.

An aerial view at dusk of a brightly lit pier and promenade of the seaside town of Blackpool

Blackpool's piers and promenade.

“Good morning! Would you like to come in?”

I found myself in a local park. I’d had a couple of sips of my coffee, but it was still early in the morning on outreach in Blackpool with workers from the Council. The greeting from the man stepping out of his tent was a cheerful surprise. I was nervous as the task was to give the people sleeping in the small clearing behind the bushes a ‘heads up’. Enforcement action was planned, and a new Public Space Protection Order (PSPO)—another crude way to police the bodies of the unhoused who show up in places society doesn’t really want them—had been placed on the park. The Salvation Army and Council hoped to avoid, or at least lessen, any distress that a confrontation with enforcement agencies might bring about. However, sometimes the message can be confused with the messenger. Fortunately, my worries were unnecessary.

“You can get through here. Don’t worry, you won’t get muddy. We’ve made a path!”

He beckoned me and my colleagues to an opening. He had indeed made a path with some bark chippings. Giving us reassurance about the mud underfoot, he guided us to the space they had made home. The word ‘made’ is important here since they had shaped the space to become more habitable. This created the opportunity to welcome us and to show off what they had done. There was dignity in the orderliness of the space and an obvious pride in the landscaping. The message about enforcement was given with gentleness and received with grace. This grace, unexpected yet appreciated, was the day’s first lesson in humanity. My main lesson was realised only later, after we had bid each other farewell: that there is a deeply human and Christian call to transform spaces into meaningful places.

Just as birds intricately weave branches into nests and beavers architecturally sculpt their dams, we humans engage in this process to shape our environments to fulfil our needs.

Although living on the edges of society, those I met had carved out a small space to call home. They exerted control over it. What was previously space became place through personalisation, social interaction, and functionality. Human experience was layered there, changing the appropriate mode of analysis from geography to biography. Life was being lived. However, that place was to return to its previous anonymity. It would lose its distinctiveness, stripped of the layers of meaning it had for the short time it was inhabited. Although it may sound nostalgic, it's clear that for those living in them, the tents were more than a makeshift solution. They symbolised a deep need to create a home, even in the toughest conditions. Experiencing long-term homelessness, they saw the park as an improvement over the exposed town-centre shop doorways, fully aware, however, of the hurdles in finding a stable home. They looked at their time in the park not just as a stopgap but as a respite in the journey towards a better future, even though they knew it wouldn't be quick. Their plans clashed with the reality of enforcement agencies, whose actions focused on moving them on quickly.

Their attempts to carve out a place of their own in the park are an expression of an impulse indelibly woven into the human condition: the need to make our environment our own. Just as birds intricately weave branches into nests and beavers architecturally sculpt their dams, we humans engage in this process to shape our environments to fulfil our needs. This instinctive behaviour is also an inherent drive to mould our surroundings to reflect our identity. These acts of placemaking not only alter our immediate environments to enhance our quality of life. They also influence the broader ecological and social landscapes in which we dwell. Indeed, a PSPO is part of that broader social landscape. So too was our outreach. The reciprocal relationship between humans, habitats, and other humans highlights how our endeavours to create 'home' extend beyond mere physical modifications. They are the very fabric of our communities and ecosystems. By transforming spaces into places imbued with meaning and purpose, we participate in an ongoing dialogue with the world that shapes both our development as individuals and the collective evolution of our surroundings.

Stewardship goes beyond mere conservation, however, embedding a sense of responsibility to enhance communal welfare and well-being

It is a sentiment I know myself. Having frequently moved home in my youth, like many who search for a place to belong, I am acquainted with the need to craft home anew. As a child, it was putting up familiar football posters on my bedroom wall. As an adult, it is a reshuffling of the living room furniture, which my wife graciously accepts. Intriguingly, my grandmother, whom I know only through stories as she died before my birth, shared this ritual of rearranging her lounge. It is a compelling idea that such behaviours might form part of our genetic makeup, passed along generations, silently teaching us habits to create home. Perhaps this impulse is heightened by my dwelling not being my own but rather a provision by The Salvation Army to fulfil my commitment as a Salvation Army officer. This rearrangement ritual becomes a prayer in action, making space into place again. It is a home not owned by me but held in trust, reminding me that my role in the community is both temporal and purposeful, and my residence a testimony to service over possession.

In Christian thought, there has always been a strong emphasis on caring for the environment, a practice often referred to as "stewardship." This concept is rooted in the belief that all people are caretakers of the Earth, entrusted to foster and preserve the natural and social environments in which they live. Stewardship goes beyond mere conservation, however, embedding a sense of responsibility to enhance communal welfare and well-being—what in Hebrew is called shalom. Shalom encompasses more than peace; it implies a holistic harmony that includes justice, well-being, and prosperity. In practice, this means Christians are encouraged not just to inhabit spaces but to actively improve them, ensuring they contribute positively to the community. This desire to contribute to the fulness of human experience expressed as shalom underscores the dual nature of Christian and, fundamentally, human existence: engaged, yet expectant; grounded, yet yearning for a true home.

The mission of placemaking knows no bounds: from the local county to the national landscape, and even the global stage.

Placemaking is about transforming both individual spaces and entire communities, such as towns and cities in need of rejuvenation. An example of such transformation is seen in Blackpool, a town with a rich history, now on the brink of significant change. The Blackpool Pride of Place Partnership, formed seven years ago, underscores this through its recent event at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, launching the Town Prospectus for 2024. This event showcased the combined efforts of both the private and public sectors to achieve their shared goals. The latest prospectus highlighted the progress from mere ideas to tangible achievements. Much like the pride the unhoused man showed in his makeshift chip-wood path, it highlighted with rightful pride the transformation of concepts from the initial prospectus—once mere computer-generated images—into tangible buildings and projects now existing in reality. This larger-scale transformation reflects a universal need to adapt our environments for the better, mirroring the individual acts of placemaking, like those seen in a morning outreach in the park. The practical challenge is how the instincts and dreams of the unhoused man, currently manifest in a little bark footpath, might be better translated into the wider process of town-wide identity. This process often leaves even the most engaged people feeling overlooked, especially those trapped in the cycle of homelessness, unable to see beyond immediate survival. It is here that the Christian community gets involved in this placemaking.

Just as the church will be called to extend support to a person without a home, we are similarly obliged to play a role in the broader scope of regeneration efforts by helping the voiceless find their voice and amplifying it. Our stewardship extends beyond mere occupation of space; it is a call to play a bold role, engaging confidently and constructively with decision-makers and policy-shapers to help resist the secular tendency towards inequity. The Christian’s vocation to sojourn purposefully intersects with a civic duty to nurture spaces that promote the well-being of all residents, but with a particular bias towards those who are voiceless. In the context of Blackpool, invoking the spirit of Jeremiah we are urged to ‘seek the shalom of Blackpool... and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its shalom you will find your shalom.’ This noble endeavour to move the ‘World As It Is’ to the ‘World As It Should Be’ is transformative. It not only reshapes our communities but also refines our own character from ‘Who I Am’ to ‘Who I Should Be’. This fusion of spiritual odyssey and community involvement epitomises Christian discipleship. Placemaking, then, can be an act of faith and dedication, not merely shaping physical landscapes but also weaving a spiritual fabric that enriches the collective identity of our communal life by including those on the edge, like people in tents in a park.

This principle transcends the specific context of Blackpool. The mission of placemaking knows no bounds: from the local county to the national landscape, and even the global stage. The shaping of space into home is a fundamental instinct relevant to all, from an unhoused neighbour to residents of a town like Blackpool to the Christian sojourning in the world. The church has an invaluable role to play in this effort, serving as both a consistent presence in a place undergoing upheaval and being a catalyst for change, but most particularly an avenue for participation for those we might consider to be ‘the least of these’ - the homeless man; the battered girlfriend; the addict; the asylum seeker; the kid excluded from school; the lonely older person. By embracing this call, the church upholds its commitment to being a faithful community and fostering belonging. It also participates in the divine act of creation, shaping the world to reflect God’s love and grace. Through this sacred duty, the church contributes to spaces becoming places of shalom. Indeed, without ‘the least of these’ playing a part, true shalom is not possible. By partnering with other local organisations through broad-based community organisations, initiating housing projects, or advocating for policy changes, the church can materialise its vision to make earth a bit more like heaven. Examples from communities where churches have led or participated in urban regeneration efforts demonstrate the transformative power of faith in action, turning spaces of neglect into thriving places of community and support.

From the personal touch of a man creating pathways in a park, to my relocating of household furniture, to the communal efforts in Blackpool's regeneration, we witness a profound truth: that shaping our world to become home is not just an act of physical transformation but an expression of deep spiritual yearning, which is, fundamentally, to know that the Kingdom of God is among us.