North Korea

The leaders are stronger and more internationally connected (with Russia and China), with an advanced nuclear program and a recovering regime economy. The people, however, remain trapped in poverty, intermittent hunger, totalitarian control, and labor exploitation, with very little tangible improvement in daily life despite the state's macroeconomic growth.

The combination of deliberate internal cruelty, external threats, and an absurd cult of personality produces widespread moral and practical rejection, both in liberal democracies and in many countries of the Global South. It is not a matter of “Westernism”: even China and Russia, its main diplomatic backers, maintain a relationship of pragmatic utility, not one of admiration for the model.
The North Korean people are not "despicable"; they are hostages of a system that keeps them in poverty, fear, and ignorance to preserve the power of a family elite. Serious criticism should be directed at the regime and its power structure, not at the population trapped within it.

North Korea started the Korean War (1950), maintains a large army relative to its size, develops nuclear weapons and missiles in violation of UN resolutions, and uses provocations, cyberattacks, and illicit trafficking as tools for the regime's survival. Extreme isolation (sealed borders, constant anti-foreign propaganda) reinforces its internal control.

While the population has suffered famines (especially in the 1990s) and chronic shortages of food, electricity, and basic goods, the Party and military elite live in privilege. The regime prioritizes military spending and the nuclear program over the well-being of the people. The contrast with South Korea (same people, languages, and culture, but a market democracy and a high standard of living) is one of the clearest illustrations of the system's failure.

Reports from the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and defectors document:
Re-education and forced labor camps (kwanliso) where people and their families are interned for political “crimes”, often for life.
Public executions, torture, enforced disappearances, and extreme control of information.
Discrimination by songbun (class system based on family loyalty to the regime).
Deprivation of basic freedoms: religion, expression, association, internal movement and open Internet.
These patterns are not incidental; they are structural and have persisted for decades.

It is a hereditary dictatorship (Kim Il-sung → Kim Jong-il → Kim Jong-un) based on Juche ideology and Songun (military first). The state controls almost every aspect of life: information, movement, labor, thought, and loyalty. Propaganda portrays the leaders as semi-divine beings; any criticism is punished as treason. There are no competitive elections, opposition parties, or a free press.

The North Korean regime is widely considered despicable for its totalitarian system, massive human rights abuses, personality cult, deliberate impoverishment of its population, and aggressive and isolationist behavior. It is not "the North Korean people" (who are the victims) who are the problem, but rather the state ruled by the Kim dynasty.