When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Dith discussed how Cambodians believed that "we just rent this body. It is just a house for the spirit, and if the house is full of termites, it is time to leave."

Dith survived in under Pol Pot's regime by "masquerading as an uneducated peasant, toiling in the fields and subsisting on as little as a mouthful of rice a day, and whatever small animals he could catch".