how do we arrive at a real perspective?

There's no real way to get anything close to a real perspective if you only know English. That's the reality. To approach a real perspective, the bare minimum is learning the relevant language and engaging primary sources written or spoken in that language. English is the tongue of Western imperialism, so the vast majority of material in English will support the Western imperialist line and the majority of material in English that don't either come from state actors who have the resources to hire English translators or independent content creators who completely rely on those same state sources.

There's plenty of nuanced discourse on North Korean defector who fled to South Korea. And they're all going to be in Korean. For English, it's either the DPRK line that they're doing it largely for economic reasons or the US/ROK line that they're doing it for freedom^TM^ and democracy^TM^.