According to CIA 2008 estimates life expectancy in North Korea is 71.92, which is far higher than global average and even slightly higher than that of EU members Romania and Latvia. HDI for North Korea is only available for 1995 where it was 0.766. Both figures show that life in North Korea is somewhere in the middle of modern world, far better than in real third world, and vastly better than historical average.

It seems to me that North Korea was used as an example for its connotations, not denotations - that's a cheap trick that we should be avoiding.