Interesting side note that is rarely mentioned, a surprisingly large amount of defectors actually defect back to DPRK. When you are enclosed in something like DPRK a lot of the time people can't handle the stress of not being in that sort of system anymore.

One thing to note, there was a study that showed that even when they are in countries with an abundance of food, their eating habits remained the same. They ate the same sized small portions that they used to in NK.

As a comment on the article, I think it would be very easy for China to transition them into a sucessful Chinese model with capitalist reforms whilst still being totalitarian. The people don't necessarily want 'freedom' as long as they are adequately taken care of, transposing western mindsets onto them and assuming that they consider things like 'freedom of speech' as necessary isn't generally helpful.