Shin gained American citizenship in 1989, and continued to produce films in the United States, now under his adopted name Simon S. Sheen.

[15] Shin featured the Western princess, female sex workers for American soldiers, in The Evil Night (1952) and A Flower in Hell (1958).

[17] During the 1970s, Shin became less active, while South Korea's cinema industry in general suffered under strict censorship and constant government interference.

[18] In 1978, Shin's former wife, Choi Eun-hee, an actress who starred in many of his films, was kidnapped in Hong Kong and taken to North Korea.

The kidnappings were on orders of future leader Kim Jong-il, who wanted to establish a film industry for his country to sway international opinion regarding the views of the Workers' Party of Korea.

[20] They managed to obtain political asylum from the US embassy in Vienna and Kim Jong-il became convinced that the couple had been kidnapped by the Americans.

Shin and his wife lived covertly for two years in Reston, Virginia, under American protection and authorities debriefed the couple about Kim Jong-il and their experience in North Korea.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun posthumously awarded Shin the Gold Crown Cultural Medal on April 12, 2006, the country's top honor for an artist.

In 2015, an English language biography of his life (along with Choi Eun-hee), called A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, was published by Paul Fischer.