A North Korean man has revealed the horrors he faced while secretly living as a Christian in the East Asian country, recounting how he narrowly escaped work camps, fled to China and eventually applied for asylum in the U.S.
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Choi Kwanghyuk, 55, made no bones about his gratitude for finding a new life in America, telling Fox News, “The life in North Korea is hell … life in America is heaven.”
Kwanghyuk explained how he was sent to a work camp in 2008 after he was arrested and questioned about his faith.
Before that, he experienced life as a North Korean Christian who couldn’t publicly share his beliefs. He started an underground church comprised of around nine people, but risked the death penalty if he even considered evangelizing.
“We couldn’t raise our voice during a service, we couldn’t sing out loud during a worship … that was hard,” Kwanghyuk said. “Also, we had to hide so that other people could not see us.”
Services would be held by a river or in the mountains — and he said that his church only had one Bible.
Kwanghyuk explained that, after his eventual arrest, he was questioned about his faith and tortured.
“I was tortured there,” he told Fox of his prison experience. “I kept denying it.”
As Faithwire previously reported, Kwanghyuk is hardly the first person to discuss the horrors in North Korea.
Another defector from North Korea also recently shared some of the horrifying sights she observed while living in the reclusive country. Hee Yeon Lim, 26, told The Mirror that her father was a senior government officer under Kim Jong-un, and shared some of the unimaginable details of what reportedly goes on inside of the country: executions, sex slavery and more.
“Despite our privilege we were scared. I saw terrible things in Pyongyang,” she said, noting that 11 musicians were killed in front of her after being accused of making a porn video. “We were ordered to leave our classes by security men and made to travel to the Military Academy in Pyongyang. There is a sports ground there, a kind of stadium.”
It was there that she said the musicians were tied up, hooded and brought out before 10,000 people who had been assembled to watch. Then, the individuals were abused and killed right in front of her.
“What I saw that day made me sick in my stomach. They were lashed to the end of anti-aircraft guns,” she said. “A gun was fired, the noise was deafening, absolutely terrifying and the guns were fired one after the other. The musicians just disappeared each time the guns were fired into them. Their bodies were blown to bits, totally destroyed, blood and bits flying everywhere.”
Read more of our North Korea coverage here.