Any dictator or junta knows that depending on how bad they treated the population will eventually turn around on them.
So their goal is to get harsher and harsher, hoping to kill, outlast their opponents or die a natural death, which means at that point they WIN.
In the case of some place like Burma, it may have sounded bad, and sure, I would never want to live under such a regime, but they don't have 1/2 the country filled with slave farms to send you if you annoyed them. They had a chance of coming out OK, especially since they didn't kill or fill their prisons with political prisoners. They had about a 1,000 at any given moment under arrest. And they were not known for actively killing them.
On the other hand, Assad KNOWS what happens if he allows any power change. Same thing that happened to Hussain, Khadafi, Tito, the czars, (you get the point). So he's digging in. And his level of power is nothing compared to the NK generals.