Yea yea I know, not all contradictions imply a fundamental error.
This line is currently in popular usage by online liberals who are forced to work through their 
as China ascends, as DPRK approaches normalization, as Iran demonstrates its regional force, as Ukraine inevitably loses, as the US murders and still loses, as Sahel states inch toward sovereignty. These contradictions are becoming more striking and difficult to hand-wave. And in the first phase of this dissonance, the reflex is to allow the dissonance no matter how deafening.
Do you know why there are two Koreas? There was a single unified Korea until shortly after Kim Il Sung liberated them from Japanese occupation with help from USSR and China. How did they end up being split into North and South?
Then the US ruined everything with the Korean War, I know, because they didn’t want to lose influence in Asia because of the USSR.
If you know this and even if we assume the worst things you know about North Korea to be true, how can you put US and DPRK on the scales and weigh them against each other seeing how the former is directly responsible for how the latter turned out to be?
The US continued ruining everything with its economic siege war. The destruction of the USSR lead to economic collapse and internal turmoil because the US war against the people never ended. The suffering you heard about was caused by the US.
Surely you know about Cuba suffering blackouts - do you think that’s their government’s fault too?