The right thing: A deal with God

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1:08This programme contains references to imprisonment, child abandonment, suicide, and some references to violence, which some listeners may find upsetting.

1:21A North Korean teenager is thwarted in his attempt to escape the country. If I sent back to North Korea, I would be executed, I knew. But instead of death, what awaited him was some extraordinary advice from a fellow prisoner, a former gangster. He told me, you could pray to God for your survival. The first sentence came to me was, God, I don't want to be killed. Amen. I don't want to go back to North Korea. Amen. I want to get out of this prison. Amen. I'm Mike Woldridge and this is the documentary from the BBC World Service. In the first of my occasional heart and soul series, The Right Thing, the extraordinary story of Timothy Cho, who took huge risks in search of a new life after he'd been abandoned by his parents in North Korea.

2:15We'll hear about the deal Timothy made with God. God, if you give me my freedom, then in return I will give all my life to you. And we ask whether he now thinks this was the right thing to do. The central question in this series.

2:38Since the 1950s, North Korea has been an authoritarian isolationist state and in practice there's no freedom of religion. Young Timothy Cho and his university-educated schoolteacher parents, like all North Koreans, lived a very restricted and controlled life. And this included control of religious faith. When I was 11, a man was executed. And he was executed because he helped three women to go to church in China. It is a political crime to become involved in Christian activities or any other religious activities in North Korea. Therefore, you become a political prisoner. So this man who was executed in front of many people and children were sitting at the front of the crowd.

3:23We were forced to do so. When Timothy was nine years old, his life changed dramatically in just one day. He came home from school to find his parents had fled North Korea and left him behind. When I came home, my parents were gone. And with that moment, when I opened the door, you see the frozen wind hitting your face. And you realize this was not the house where I used to come in and out. And the reality, realizing it and fast run to the train station. Train was just about left and sat down at the railway and crying. You wouldn't expect they would disappear like that, but they had to escape. due to political persecution.

4:12It was time ticking for them to leave me behind. Timothy's parents had been hoping his grandmother would take him in. It was total darkness. It came to me. And all night I cried. And I ran to my grandmother's house. But as soon as I saw my grandmother, I sat down on the floor and started crying. And she came and she cried with me together. Timothy says life became very tough because of the economic recession in the 1990s and a period of severe famine that accompanied it. And because of his parents' escape, the nine-year-old came to be seen as an enemy himself. Living on the streets, begging food, sleeping at train stations, in train containers, under bridges, and travel back and forth between cities and towns around and survived.

5:11I was not able to attend school anymore because teachers told me and friends called me, you're a son of a traitor. And it was a very severe atmosphere. I couldn't go to school from age 10, which part was quite most painful. I loved reading, writing. At the age of 17, you decided to follow the example of your parents and try to escape across the Chinese border and then onwards to Mongolia. What led you to flee at that time? They told me to go to coal mine because you are from enemy class, parents and background. And I realized even if I married in North Korea and had children, My children would be born with crime tag.

6:00It would be very sad and hard for me watching my children suffer from the moment they were born. So I didn't hesitate thinking of that feature, although I did not know anything what it would look like outside North Korea. So that didn't hesitate me to cross the border to China. All went well at the start. He crossed the river Tumen, which forms the border between North Korea and China, safely. When he got to the other side, he remembers seeing how young people in China wore different clothes and had different hairstyles. Then Timothy met a Christian missionary. Missionaries often helped North Korean refugees.

6:41But because of the official anti-Christian teaching Timothy had received in North Korea, he feared that the missionary might traffic him. So when I saw this missionary, I thought he was going to do terrible things to me. At the same time, I saw a few orphan children in his room. So I thought he kidnapped these kids. I also believed touching even the Bible and cross, it was a kind of curse. My finger would have rotten right away. I was so scared when I first saw the Bible and cross. Before he could reach the Mongolian border and freedom, Timothy was arrested by the Chinese military and sent back to North Korea.

7:22There he was thrown into a prison cell with over 50 people. We were sleeping, sitting upright, leaning against each other's back. My first night experience in that prison cell, a man who was leaning against me, he died, and his body was falling the next morning, and he was already tortured before I arrived. so his body dragged out of the cell seeing what was going on in that prison cell and what was happening to those other inmates being tortured, beaten up that haunted me for many years yet I wasn't killed I was sent to my grandmother's house and often raised me questions why was I the only one?

8:14Despite the failure of his first attempt, Timothy tried again within the same year. This time he managed to make his way to the city of Shanghai, and this is where his story took a new turn.

8:31He and eight other North Korean refugees decided to take a risk by breaking into an American school in the city, hoping to secure a safe passage out of China that way. I went to Shanghai American School. I thought the school, foreign school, was able to help me to get out of China safely. And so we were nine of us, eight women and myself. We planned to climb over the fence of the school. It's about 1.5-metre fence, which we did, all nine of us. And there was an 11-year-old girl in our group. I had to help her to climb over the fence safely. And because of that, I was almost caught by Chinese police.

9:18And I had to kick them back when they tried to drag my leg down. So we run through into the school and we had a paper written, we are North Korean refugees, please help us. The Shanghai American School is a private school attended by the children of foreign nationals. Timothy and his group hoped the school wouldn't hand them over to the Chinese police. So we kept on staying there until the principal told us we couldn't protect you, but we had to hand over your group to the Chinese police. I mean, we made human chains, nine of us. We made a circle. Chinese police were beating us and dragging us into police vans.

10:05Then school children were shocked, watching us being dragged and beaten up because we resisted. The children were watching while all this happened. They were. They all came out of the classroom and now surrounding and standing watching us. They also realised we were all refugees and we were just asking for help. The school put out a statement and also emailed parents. They said they were informed that the school didn't have a status which allowed them to grant political asylum and had to inform the local authorities. The group was removed from the campus, but the school said they made every effort to facilitate a humane outcome.

10:46And it was because of one of the school students that everything changed for Timothy. One of the students later emailed to a reporter. They've been taken into custody of the police, and as merely a student, I have no idea what will happen next to them. I thought it would be good to inform an organisation such as yourselves about the incident. She urged reporters to help us because we would be killed if we sent back to North Korea. And that turned out to be a very important thing that she did? It was. I think one of the reasons and a little act of love was she tried to cause the international campaign around the world.

11:33We tracked down several former students who witnessed or heard about Timothy's arrest. It remains something they remember clearly. But no one was willing to speak to us for this BBC programme. Even though this was over two decades ago, it seems that people are still very sensitive about the issues surrounding relations between North Korea, China and the US. At the time, the incident received international news coverage and there were protests in front of Chinese embassies. But knowing none of this, Timothy and his group were taken to prison in Shanghai, where Timothy feared the worst. The second attempt, if I sent back to North Korea, I would be executed, I knew.

12:16So I prepared to kill myself. Timothy's suicide attempt failed, although it left him unconscious for a while. But he didn't kill me, actually. But the rest eight women told me what happened to me. They said they prayed for me. In the prison in Shanghai, Timothy said he cried all the time, feeling he was waiting for his death. But once again, something happened which would change Timothy's life. One day, a fellow prisoner, a gangster from South Korea, asked him why he was crying all night. after hearing why he brought his own Bible into Timothy's cell. He told me you could pray to God for your survival.

13:04It didn't make any sense to me. I almost became speechless at that moment. But then when I realised, why don't I try to pray one more time because there was nothing to lose in my situation. So I decided to pray to God, someone even I don't know. I didn't know how to pray I asked the gangster how to pray he said you just say Amen at the end of your wishes the first sentence came to me was God I don't want to be killed Amen I don't want to go back to North Korea Amen I want to get time from this prison Amen it was very simple desperate and I didn't want to be killed Timothy says he prayed many times a day but nothing happened and he told the gangster god doesn't exist you lied to me and then he decided in effect to make a deal with god and i attended my prayers because i was doubting what i asked that my last prayer was god if you give me my freedom and in return i would give all my life to you.

14:16But if I was sent back to North Korea and I was killed, I said to him, I would deny your existence. So this was Timothy's bargain with God. He would dedicate his life to him if he won his freedom, but would deny God's existence if he did not. After he made his deal with God, Timothy's life took yet another turn. Two men came to see him in prison. He says they told him that the Chinese government had made the very unusual decision to deport the group of North Koreans to the Philippines with diplomatic passports. For Timothy, this was the answer to his prayer. But what else might lie behind this unusual move?

15:03North Korea, one of the world's most secretive societies, has opened its doors for the first time to an official visit by a British minister. While Timothy was waiting to hear his fate in the prison in Shanghai, North Korea was starting to make moves to build a more open relationship with other nations. The BBC's diplomatic correspondent James Robbins accompanied a junior minister from the British government, Bill Rammell, on an unprecedented visit to Pyongyang in 2004. Welcome to North Korea, minister. Strangest and most secretive of communist states. Certainly no red carpet at the airport for Bill Rammell, just a bus to the terminal like everybody else.

15:44But then for the Foreign Office Minister, an immediate opportunity to raise stories of arbitrary imprisonment and torture of political opponents with his Korean counterpart. John Nilsson-Wright is head of the Japan and Koreas programme at the University of Cambridge. He has a special interest in North Korea and also visited in 2004. In the early 2000s, it looked as if North Korea was beginning to open up. Kim Jong-il was establishing what you might describe as small market stalls. North Korean women in particular were setting up little kiosks. They were allowed to trade freely. It was the beginning of a market economy.

16:27But he says Timothy's story is still unusual, even for the time, and certainly he would have found it much harder today. It used to be the case, I think, in the early part of the 2000s that you did read accounts of people crossing the border and then being returned by the Chinese or failing in their efforts and then trying again. The contemporary situation feels a lot different. And there was a period of time when we were talking of annual defections to South Korea as numbering in the hundreds, if not in some cases, the low thousands. So there have been a steady stream. That, I think, has become much less over time.

17:04I'm Mike Wooldridge and you're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. For this edition of Heart and Soul, you're hearing the story of Timothy Cho and his miraculous escape from North Korea.

17:23We focus on the part of the internet that most people don't know about. It's called the dark web. undercover in the furthest corners of the dark web. US special agents are on a mission to locate and rescue children from abuse. Move in now. From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, the darkest web follows their shocking investigations. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.

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18:55The eight women refugees who were with Timothy in the Shanghai prison went to South Korea. But Timothy eventually made it to Britain, arriving in 2008. It was uphill for Timothy in the early days, settling down in a town in the northwest of England. I saw that God rescued me, making deal with him. and now I was chasing and suffering by this journey of hatred and anger and trauma. Often I had the feeling of numb and often wake up at midnight. I didn't realize where you were. I had to run out to the street until I discovered English road signs. Then I was able to go back to sleep. And now I started to express my anger to God again.

19:43Many nights and scream out to Him, why did you not leave me to die along with these inmates in North Korea or China? Help was to come from an unlikely source, homeless people, who attended a drop-in centre and soup kitchen at a local church. He served them tea and coffee and he asked them to help him with his then very broken English. He says he learnt thousands of words from them. As for a more formal education, Timothy became the first North Korean student at a college in his town. One of his teachers was Peter. I've never known a student work so hard as he did to learn English. He had very little English when he arrived in the UK, but he learnt it very quickly through exceptionally hard work.

20:27So he was working several hours every night, asking for extra homework, asking for advice, asking for my support to help him learn English. He really wanted to make a life in Britain, and he wanted to learn the language as quickly as he possibly could. And Peter has fond memories of Timothy's other ways of making do in his new life. I remember he was growing vegetables on the grass verge outside his house and that was just a reminder maybe that he'd... because that's something nobody in this country would do and that maybe was a reminder that he'd come from quite a different background. It all paid off because Timothy went on to gain two degrees and with the help of mentors working in the arena of human rights and religious persecution, he got a job in the UK Parliament, where he is today a clerk to the all-party parliamentary group on North Korea.

21:22And he now champions human rights around the world, speaking in front of the United Nations and other international organisations. They haven't succeeded in destroying our hope and dreams. That's why I am here. If I say, if it is time to bring a democratic rule of North Korea, please stand with us in solidarity. God bless you all. Thank you. One event in Timothy's life that I was particularly keen to follow up with him was coming back home from school in North Korea that day to find that his parents had abandoned him. did he ever forgive them. They both ended up in South Korea. Timothy told me about a call with his mother before she died.

22:12Also asked him to forgive her before she died. She asked you to forgive her? I think she carried very heavy luggage in her heart until the moment eventually she was able to ask me. And I told her, Mama, I have already forgiven you. and she was going to die very soon actually but she lived two more weeks after that call. It was part of love. And your father? Yes, I'm in touch with him. So is the forgiveness as complete with him or not? Forgiveness is also you have to constantly try. It's not something once we declare it happens because memory remains and time to time it reflects, flashbacks doesn't disappear also.

23:03But once you know how to forgive, once you know that is a key, we have been able to remain in contact and visit. And I feel sorry for him as well. Because? I'm sure as my mother did, he also had been holding the heavy heart for years.

23:28Today I've come to see Timothy at an evangelical Anglican church where he's worshipped regularly. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Two decades after he made that deal with God, after the imprisoned former gangster taught him about prayer, Timothy says he's proud to call himself a Christian. He says his faith helped him to overcome the trauma of his early life. And freedom of worship is one of the reasons he's become a human rights activist. In North Korea, everything is completely banned. Attending a church service, singing hymn and praying to God, you expect to be persecuted.

24:08But in Britain, you walk into church with the Bible, they don't arrest you, worship God freely. So that part actually shows the country's freedom of faith and speech. expression which maintains as a democratic country and I'm proud of.

24:30Mark is Timothy's vicar. He told me that Timothy's deal with God, putting God to the test if you like, could be seen as problematic. There's a Bible verse in Deuteronomy that Jesus quotes when he's tempted in the wilderness and he says you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And so So in one sense I thought, hmm, okay, maybe it's not right to make deals with God in that way. But then I began to think about other parts of the Bible. For example, you may remember the story of Thomas, who is one of Jesus' disciples, and he's in a room with the disciples, all the rest of whom have seen the risen Jesus after his death and resurrection.

25:08But Thomas doubts, and he says, unless I put my finger in the holes in his hands and my hand in his side, I will not believe. and at which stage you might be thinking, well, he's kind of putting Jesus to the test then. But Jesus appears in that room. First thing he says is, peace be with you. Second thing he says is, Thomas, put your, here, look at my hands, put your fingers in the nail marks and put your hand in my side. And Thomas believes. I think it just shows the mercy and compassion that Jesus has, even where there are people who are putting him to the test, so to speak. the attitude of putting Jesus to the test might be a kind of manipulative, proud attitude whereas actually Timothy's attitude, Thomas' attitude seemed to be, well, certainly Timothy you were crying out in desperation, weren't you?

25:58It was a plea to God, rescue me. God loves us, please. And so I don't condemn it at all. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

26:18So, with all that, does Timothy himself believe he did the right thing by putting God to the test? I want to survive. I didn't want to go back to North Korea in order to be killed. Simply, if I go back that moment again, I would have done the same. Because in the darkness, I was hanging the moment of prayer, holding the rope. And the rope, if you fell off from it, death was there. death was scary because I saw many deaths already. Looking back on it today, do you think it was the right thing to make that kind of contract, that kind of deal with God? Without any doubt, I would say yes. If I believed anything coincidence, I would have been killed many times already from my parents.