I mean, the DPRK has gone from being bombed into the stone age by the US where the citizens literally lived in caves to avoid being hit with napalm to building amusement parks, nuclear weapons, and computers. You can't actually achieve that with slave labor, this is well known. It requires intrinsic motivation, and I can think of no better intrinsic motivation than rebuilding my country from the ground up next to my neighbors in defiance of the brutal fascism of the West.

I get that it helps you to feel like a rebel to imagine that there are zero examples of successful alternatives to the West, but you end up supporting the narratives of fascist imperialists without narry a thought to how closely you are aligned with them. You wouldn't be bothered at all if the US managed to destroy the DPRK, the PRC, Iran, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Laos. You'd think it serves them right for being fascists while the actual fascists were committing mass murder and consolidating their global dominance over 99% of the human population on the planet. And it would be OK, because you have the correct reasoning and proper liberatory line and one day, you will be out in the streets fighting that empire to build the first ever real attempt at liberation, without any hint of self awareness as the autonomous weapons systems hunt you down.