Because people are self-interested to the extreme, and powerful, domineering sociopaths can easily manipulate them by setting up incentive structures that play

Because people are self-interested to the extreme, and powerful, domineering sociopaths can easily manipulate them by setting up incentive structures that play to that self-interest. Individuals and small groups of North Koreans have certainly tried to subvert the leadership--but they simply ended up in the prison camps that the article describes, because everyone else would rather stab them in the back for a reward than assist them and face certain death or imprisonment. This isn't to say that the North Korean populace is stupid or immoral. They are merely powerless. The rules of the game are so perverse, that the players don't even matter. Put any humans in that society and they will behave the same, because there is no other choice--you either play by the rules or you die. This incentive structure is so firmly entrenched that the death of Kim Jong-Il did precisely nothing. The hydra simply sprouted a new head. (And I'd argue that a Hitler assassination would likely have had the same outcome.) There is not going to be a North Korean revolution to overthrow the Kim regime. Even if the younger Kim trips up politically and is backstabbed and supplanted by another ambitious psychopath from among the political elite, he will also find the current structure beneficial. But if that person cannot cement their power and the elite descends into infighting and schism, there could be a reform as the factions compete for power (this is what happened in the USSR and PRC). The only other way the Kims will ever be deposed is through outside military action, and they know it--that's why they are armed to the teeth.