Albania is the nearest one can come to find a similar regime to North Korea's. The country was so totalitarian you weren't free to choose almost anything. The school where you went, including the branch of study in University was decided by the state. Where to work was decided by the state. The state provided you with a house (after many, many years of waiting). The state even told you where to buy the bread, where to buy the milk, where and in what day to buy the meat, all in different stores of course. The state "guaranteed" the right to work, so almost everyone got a job and all jobs had quite similar salaries. Almost nobody had savings since salaries and prices were calculated to balance themselves for a normal family. Since everybody had to work, lots of fictitious jobs were invented. And people learned soon enough that no matter how much you worked you still got paid and got paid the same, so nobody was really working.

So, when the communism collapsed in 1990, the country collapsed too. What saved the people was the fact that Albania is a very small country of 3 million in the middle of Europe so about 30% of people were able to immigrate. Now where would 8 million of North Koreans immigrate if suddenly communism collapsed in their country? I don't know.