orientalism + drpk achievements like repelling us invasion, the country surviving the fall of east/socialist block but didn't manage to fully win the war to reunify the country like vietnam, so it's at a war state and doesn't take take many tourists from the west, adding all up, its easy to make up bullshit because no one will bother to check, the most wacky lies are taken as truth automatically.

one good example of this was a brazilian blogger that as a prank, made up that north korea was saying to it's citizens they won the 2010 soccer world cup with ridiculous scores and literally no one bothered to check, the "news" got replicated all over the west, when it was found that it was a prank the drpk embassy sent a thank you letter to him for exposing how shit western media was. it is a very interesting case.