Shin was taught various Neo-Confucian books and concepts by his grandfather, and later enrolled in the Confucian academy Sungkyunkwan,[7]: 441–2  receiving a doctoral degree in 1905.

[11]: 313 Shin went on to work for the editorial boards for two newspapers, the Hwangsŏng Sinmun and the Taehan Maeil Sinbo, and became the leader of the underground "patriotic enlightenment" group, the Sinminhoe.

[1] Shin Chae-ho wrote extensively on a theory of ethnic history which sought to challenge traditional border concepts in Korea and encourage Korean nationalism.

[3]: 27 [6]: 29–30 Shin's minjok historiographical work traced a nation's history by its racial genealogy and lineage, relying on heritable race and culture.

For Korea, the chujok was the ancient Korean-Manchurian Kingdom of the Buyeo (부여; 夫餘),[6]: 32  which, by Shin's estimate, began 5,000 years ago with the birth of Dangun, the legendary son of a bear who was transformed into a human by the god Whanin.

[6]: 35 This "Darwinian-Spencerian" framework, which prized ethnic nationalism and purity, allowed Shin to write a race-centred history of Korea that attempted to shut down the Japanese colonial justifications by conjoining ethnic history and progress, necessarily making harmful the adulteration of Korean society with Japanese culture, not a progressive one.

Shin praised the Koryeo and Choseon dynasties, but insisted that the successes that they brought were only partial, lamenting that if scholars "are searching for a full unification, it cannot be found after Tangun.

"[6]: 35–6 Shin Chae-ho is often credited as the primary source in the Juche (주체; 主體; meaning Self-reliance or Autonomy; sometimes spelt Chuch'e) political ideology.

The book also challenged literary standards by ending on an ellipsis and breaking historical continuity by borrowing characters from Korean history.

The term minjok was decried as politically unacceptable by Shin's old acquaintance from the Provisional Government, and now the first president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee.

The new South Korean government favoured the term kukka (국가), which implied loyalty to the Republic of Korea, over Shin's minjok (민족).

In the 1960s, Rhee's political regime ended and anti-imperialism sentiments redoubled, followed by scholars pursuing a new autonomous history of Korea, and revived the term minjok.

[6]: 40–1 The Park military regime in South Korea pushed for capitalist economic development, noting that dismantling the North Korean communist state would do the minjok saengjon good.

In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Il Sung is said to be the leader of the minjok, and follows similar genealogical tracings of Koreans into ancient Korean-Manchuria.

[6]: 39–40 [21]: 271 Shin Chae-ho is held in high esteem by North Korea[5]: 112–3  and made a lasting impact on the Korean perception of Japan and imperialism generally.

This is aggravated by the fact that Shin had few, if any, compelling references for his historical claims, making his boundaries largely arbitrary or folk-history based.