The rice for Shin's brother
There is a turning point in Shin's relationship to his family when he discovers his mother sharing their precious resources with his brother. He hates this, because he is so concerned with his own survival that he doesn't have enough family love to understand that if his brother and mother survive, that is also good for him. The contest symbolizes the intentional scarcity and the dysfunction that it causes in North Korean families when the government withholds resources.
The guard's betrayal
Shin decides to rat out his mother and brother, having overheard them discussing an attempt to escape from their camp. This escape plan is illegal and Shin has been brainwashed through his entire education to tell someone if he ever hears anything even remotely negative about the government or about the camps. However, when he tells, something symbolic happens; he is betrayed by the guard. In the same way he vied for credit, the guard does too, putting him in prison and pretending that the guard himself discovered the attempted escape.
The archetypal "Uncle"
Shin meets an archetypal man who helps him in the prison. He is archetypal because he is a mysterious old man (clearly an archetype), and because he provides healing and direction to the broken-down and unhealthy young men in the camp. He is a pillar of direction and wisdom, helping to orient the youth so that they understand something about life other than what they were taught to believe in school.
The unknown encounter with father
In another clearly archetypal moment, Shin accidentally meets his own father in jail. This symbolically means that he has reached the depths of hell, because he is like Virgil's Aeneas who descends into Hades to encounter his father. Together, they work together to understand their fate, and to the reader, this symbolizes the ongoing, generational brokenness of North Korea. This is when he starts to feel like maybe he should change his mind about North Korea.
The death of the mother
The final change that helps Shin to betray the government and escape is the death of his mother and brother who are executed in front of the whole camp. The government makes a statement through their death that disorder and escape are not options for the camp prisoners. This leads Shin to understand why they were attempting to escape in the first place, and in the end, their deaths are also symbolized in the dead body he vaults (because in both cases, he was spying against them for the government, and in both cases, they attempt escape).
