Dongsok Shin was born in Boston and studied modern piano with his mother, Chonghyo Shin, and with Nadia Reisenberg at the Mannes College of Music. He converted exclusively to early keyboard instruments in the early 1980's. He received international recognition as music director of baroque opera productions with the Mannes Camerata and has been a member of the internationally acclaimed baroque ensemble REBEL since 1997.

He has appeared with early music groups all over the United States, including the Carmel Bach Festival, American Classical Orchestra, ARTEK, Concert Royal, Early Music New York, and Pro Music Rara; has toured throughout the Americas and Europe; and has been heard on numerous radio broadcasts. He has accompanied Renée Fleming, Rufus Müller, Rachel Brown, Jed Wentz, Marion Verbruggen, and Barthold Kuijken in recital. In addition to his performing career, he is a recording engineer, producer, and editor of early music recordings for many labels, as well as a producer of music videos.

He is a curator of the antique keyboard instruments at the Flint Collection in Delaware, a tuner of early keyboards at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, and the early keyboard technician for the Metropolitan Opera. Videos produced by the Metropolitan Museum of Dongsok demonstrating early fortepianos, including the earliest known Bartolomeo Cristofori piano from 1720, have garnered over 400,000 views.