I'd say you're right that it is quite unlike all we have seen before, however, there are more precedents (although you picked an excellent one with Albania).

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.