A popular church minister and his family hugged their friends in a tearful last goodbye as they were deported to Korea.

Reverend Wan Shin, 45, who gives sermons at Holy Trinity Church in Sutton, was helped by his colleague Rev Martin Camroux to drive to Heathrow and leave the community he served for eight years.

Alongside him in the car that would begin the long journey back to Korea, were his two children, the youngest of whom was ten when they moved to Sutton in 2002.

Hyun, 19, a student at Overton Grange School, and Joon, a former Wallington Grammar School student, solemnly followed their parents into the car.

Mr Shin said the night before his sons friends’ had cried as they said goodbye to the two siblings, who can speak minimal Korean and fear undergoing mandatory military service.

He said at the church’s Sunday service his wife Ju Young Kim, 45, who works at the Oasis restaurant, and the rest of his congregation had been inconsolable, sobbing at the prospect of the family leaving.

He said: “We have cried for a long time now. It is very sad. I feel quite numb. We are not sure what the future holds.”

Despite a passionate crusade from their congregation and neighbours, as well as advocacy from MP Paul Burstow, the Shins’ eleventh-hour application for asylum was rejected by the Immigration minister, Phil Woolas, earlier this month.

Rev Shin, an ordained minister of the conservative Korean Evangelical Holiness Church, had campaigned to stay fearing he will no longer be able to work in Korea, after his views were significantly liberalised since worshipping at Holy Trinity – a United Reformed Methodist Church.

But resigned to his fate after Mr Woolas’ ruling, Mr Shin booked his family’s tickets to fly to Korea the same quiet dignity with which he battled to stay in Britain.

Rev Camroux said the minister’s decision was “immoral” and meant the end of the pioneering multicultural faith iniative in Sutton.

He said: “In his spare time, without any payment Rev Shin began the Korean congregation and Mrs Shin is as honest as the day is long.

“Both boys coming here with very little English were heading for University places. Surely these are exactly the sort of people we should be welcoming to stay.

“Why are they then being asked to leave?

“It is very much easier to deport the Shins than it is to deport drug dealers with false papers who flit from one address to another. The honest suffer, and the dishonest escape."

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