In particular, North Korea clamps heavily down on unauthorized information and makes up a lot of stuff. When your data is bad, it's not too surprising if your conclusions are bad.

Even people who are cynical about the regime probably aren't cynical enough. I forget the book I read this in (The Cleanest Race?) but I recall reading one story about a high-level NK official who was aware of the many abuses, but it wasn't until he learned from the Russian archives that the Korean War had actually been started by Kim Il-Sung after Stalin gave his permission (the official NK version is that the bloodthirsty capitalist SK dictator Syngman Rhee invaded NK unprovoked) that he realized just how far down the rabbit hole he had to go.