What sort of mass psychological issues are we looking at here? I can only imagine how the minds of the current citizenship work, would it be nearly impossible for those raised only knowing what they know to recover from the previous trauma?
The problem is that it is hard to be sure about the state of mind of the general population. They could be mostly completely brainwashed and controlled; or going along with the charade out of necessity while behind the scenes there is widespread shared disgust at the leadership; or they could be living terrified, isolated lives unable to speak about their private thoughts to anyone, even their families, out of fear of police informers. People do attempt to escape the country, though, so there is some dissent.
Overall I'd say NK is unique, and when it disintegrates the social effects probably won't be like anything we've seen before.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albania#Communist_Albania_.2819...
One example comes to mind is post-defeat Germany in 1945. This is particularly interesting because here we have the total, absolute and undebatable annihilation of an entire worldview. North Korea will very likely also experience this "everything you ever believed is wrong" moment, so some parallels might apply. The Germans mostly kept their heads down and tried to ingore the past for a few decades. This might not be possible for the North Koreans, however, as they are not surrounded by rubble but by prosperity.
Another example would be the core-to-periphery of the Soviet Union when that collapsed. Around here there are many former inhabitants of the SU and they tell stories of chaos and desorientation with many people using their newly-recieved freedom to cheat others or be cheated. I think the Albanians experienced something similar with a snowball-scam of national proportions. It would be unfortunate if the economic reality of "the little man" in democratic post-North Korea were similar to this, since these things usually trigger a backlash.
Also, you must remember that living in the Weimar Republic was pure hardship for many people. So there's a large part of the populace for whom "the movement" was the first time they had been on track for a better future. (Sounds horrible from our perspective, but remember that we have the benefit of hindsight.)
If our minds can supress the differences between ideals and reality in USA, Russia, India, Pakistan, Japan or any other country of residence, I believe North Koreans can do the same -- focus on their daily life and ignore the atrocities.
All of that is just my opinion, obviously. My family adapted fine after the fall of the Soviet Union, but that's just anecdotal.
[1] http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/north-ko...