Man who escaped North Korea opens up about traumatizing experience of seeing executions aged 11

A man who escaped from North Korea has shared horrifying stories about his life in the highly secretive country.

Timothy Cho is a North Korean defector who was able to get out of the country, and he has shared some brutal realities about life in the controversial country - including how he was forced to watch public executions as a child.

When he was growing up there, both of Timothy's parents were teachers in a high school, with his dad keeping history books in the house.

"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 shared with LADbible Stories.

Timothy was all too aware of what might happen to anybody who breaks the extremely strict laws in North Korea when he was forced to watch executions when he was just 11 years old.

Pyongyang in North Korea (George Pachantouris/Getty)

'His crime was he helped three North Korean women to cross the border to China'

"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."

He went on to explain in vivid detail how the execution was carried out, explaining that the man was executed by 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.

Timothy spoke about being forced to watch public executions as a child (YouTube/LADBible Stories)

North Korea's brutal executions

In some executions by firing squad, one or more of the shooters may be given a blank round, or told that one of them has, so that no one person in the squad can know for certain whose bullet killed the condemned person.

But in the case of the execution that Timothy saw, this was very much not the case, with the three bullets each being directed to a particular part of the 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."

After the shots, Timothy shared how the body was disposed of with ruthless efficiency.

"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's parents fled North Korea when he was nine years old after being tipped off they were being politically prosecuted, leaving him behind living on the streets and fighting starvation.

He was able to escape, but was then captured by the Chinese army, and after being tortured for the defection, he was able to escape for a second time - finally finding freedom.