The evilness or not of the North Koreans is not at issue. As is amply demonstrated by recent history, oppressive regimes will be tolerated and even funded by the West while it's in the West's financial and/or strategic interests to do so. During these times, the West doesn't say much about the regimes in question. (I'm specifically thinking of the funding of Saddam during the 80s and of Suharto during the 80s and 90s, despite clear and present evidence that both leaders were fully-fledged members of The Nasty Club)

When it is in the West's financial and/or strategic interests to control the regions currently occupied by these regimes, it flexes its considerable military muscle and exerts its more-or-less total financial control. All whilst crying "freedom!".

There's a lot of dead marsh Arabs would have liked some freedom when it was promised the first time around.

North Korea is in the unusual position of being financially puny but with the dual wild-cards of a completely loopy leader plus an unknown but probably non-zero nuclear capability. The atrocious behaviour of the Kim Jong-Il administration towards its own citizens who commit thoughtcrime is well known if not widely publicised. This, however, does not mean that a large proportion of the North Korean population isn't composed of people who are just trying to get by, like you and me. It is my reading that this article is about those people.

It is a common feature of post-September 11th dialogue that the individual people living in a country and the policies and actions of the government of that country are rendered indistinguishable.

It isn't the case.