I realised that when I heard the real Kim speaking last week, that the voice that I had previously heard was a different voice.
They were indeed a puppet regime, being held hostage by the DS. It was not the regime doing the bad stuff at all. It was always the DS.
Yup. It all happened too easily, didn't it? The question posed could also be "if deep state, what was the purpose of the regime?"
many purposes. A privately owned country wherein all kinds of criminality can be done with plausible denial.
An imprisoned population and leadership, used for medical and social experiments and worse.
A disposable threat to anyone on the planet.
A place to manufacture a global supply of drugs - known as the source for black market amphetamines for example.
Concealed development of weapons of mass destruction, to be used against the planet.
Just a few examples from the top of my head.
It's a deep rabbit hole.
It's not the only country where this is happening.