When Blaine Harden wrote his shocking 2008 profile of Shin Dong-hyuk for The Washington Post, Mr. Shin was living in Seoul, South Korea, and already a published author. He had written “Escape to the Outside World,” a 2007 Korean-language account of his horrific upbringing.

Mr. Shin was born in a North Korean forced-labor camp and then found his way to freedom. There were some problems with playing back this account verbatim. So Mr. Harden’s dramatic front-page article, “North Korean Prison Camp Escapee Tells of Horrors, Worries About Those Left Behind,” took care to include a disclaimer: “Shin’s story could not be independently verified, but it has been vetted and vouched for by leading human-rights activists and members of defector organizations in Seoul,” The Post article said.

Unfortunately, the disclaimer turned out to be necessary. As Mr. Harden now acknowledges in “Escape From Camp 14,” his blunt, best-selling book about Mr. Shin’s life, Mr. Shin had built his own memoir upon a gigantic lie.

In his account Mr. Shin claimed to have been a helpless innocent witness to the execution of his mother and brother when Mr. Shin was only 14. He had indeed been helpless, and he had the torture marks to prove it.