His biography, Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, was written with the assistance of former Washington Post journalist Blaine Harden.

[16] Part of Shin's right middle finger was cut off by his supervisor as punishment for accidentally breaking a sewing machine.

[16] He learned to survive by any means, including eating rats, frogs, and insects, and reporting fellow inmates for rewards.

Shin had just finished eating watery corn porridge, and was trying to sleep until he overheard that He Geun, his brother, had run from the cement factory.

[13][24] According to Shin, the guards lit a charcoal fire under his back and forced a hook into his skin so that he could not struggle which caused many large scars still visible on his body.

[25][26] On 29 November 1996, after approximately seven months spent in a tiny concrete prison cell, he was released and joined by his father, who had also been imprisoned.

[13][27][28] Shin stated that at the time of the executions of his brother and mother, in his teenaged mind he felt they "deserved" their fates for both breaking prison rules and, conversely, not including him in the escape plan.

[13][29] Shin has since expressed remorse over his actions, saying in an interview with Anderson Cooper for the CBS television show 60 Minutes, "My mother and brother, if I could meet them through a time machine, I would like to go back and apologize".

[30] In interviews to South Korea's National Intelligence Service and others, and in his Korean language memoir, Shin had said that he had no prior knowledge of the escape.

[31][32] While working at a textile factory, Shin became friends with a 40-year-old political prisoner from Pyongyang (surnamed Park), who was educated and had traveled outside North Korea.

[33] According to Shin, nearly every meal he had eaten up to that point had been a soupy gruel of cabbage, corn, and salt, with occasional wild-caught rats and insects.

On 2 January 2005, the pair was assigned to a work detail near the camp's electric fence on the top of a 1,200-foot (370 m) mountain ridge to collect firewood.

"[42] In his new foreword for the book in 2015, he described Shin as an "unreliable narrator" and commented that, "It seems prudent to expect new revisions",[2] but also clarifying "I don’t know if that's true (that the story will change)".

We can expect that this would have a major impact on every aspect of who he is, on his memory, his emotional regulation, his ability to relate to others, his willingness to trust, his sense of place in the world, and the way he gives his testimony.

"[2] Korean specialist Andrei Lankov commented that "some suspicions had been confirmed when Shin suddenly admitted what many had hitherto suspected", described Harden's book as unreliable, and noted that defectors faced considerable psychological pressure to embroider their stories.

[43] Shin explained he did not tell the full story because he wished to hide "that my mother and brother were executed because of my report," saying "the most important reason why I could not reveal all of the truth was because of my family."

"[9] After spending some time working as a laborer in different parts of China, Shin was accidentally discovered by a journalist in a restaurant in Shanghai, and the reporter recognized the importance of his story.

[47] In August 2013, Shin gave several hours of testimony to the United Nations' first commission of inquiry into human rights abuses of North Korea.

[34][48] A member of the UN commission described Shin as the world's "single strongest voice" on the atrocities inside North Korean camps.

[34] Shin described some aspects of his personal life in South Korea in a Financial Times interview on popular culture saying that "I don't really know anything about music.

Although Shin lives in South Korea, he was informally adopted by an American couple in Ohio during his time in the United States.

"[34] In December 2013, Shin wrote an open letter in the Washington Post to American basketball star Dennis Rodman who visited North Korea a number of times as a self-avowed "friend for life"[49] of Kim Jong Un.

[51] In 2012, when the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention asked the North Korean government about the status of Shin Dong-hyuk's father, they responded that there was no such person.

Next to the information also given in the videos, it included additional information on Shin's birthplace and his father: Shin was allegedly born in Soksan-ri, Pukchang, South Pyongan Province (평안남도 북창군 석산리) and later moved into Pongchang-ri, Pukchang, South Pyongan Province (평안남도 북창군 봉창리).

[1] In 2012, journalist Blaine Harden published Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, based on his interviews with Shin.

[55] Dalhousie University issued a statement averring that Shin's story, as told through the book, "has shifted the global discourse about North Korea, shining a light on the human rights abuses so prevalent within the regime.

[56] Students at the university "held a peace march and launched a social media campaign to raise awareness of human rights violations in North Korea.