Most of what you hear in western media about how the DPRK functions is outright lies, you literally can't take any of that at face value.
What you need to understand is that, for the crime of attempting to build socialism, the United States dropped more bombs on the DPRK than were dropped throughout the entire second world war, destroying every standing structure over two stories tall and murdering a double digit percentage of their population. Then the US occupation of the southern half of the peninsula never ended, there was never a peace treaty. This resulted in the highly militarized border and tensions with the south. The United States is still technically at war with the DPRK to this day.
Then the UN and the United States imposed devastating sanctions on the country to halt its recovery from the war. Those sanctions are actually what prevent North Koreans from being able to visit most countries, not any sort of internal DPRK law.
After the USSR collapsed, the DPRK was completely cut off from global trade. By way of sanctions the United States attempted to literally starve out the entire country all the while putting out atrocity propaganda to smear socialism and provoke regime change.
To the extent that you can say life in the DPRK is subpar, you can lay the blame squarely on the feet of the United States and its vassals, not authoritarianism or any sort of bullshit you've been hearing about them in the news your entire life.
Yes, this article is spinning the campaign of starvation the US imposed on the DPRK following the collapse of the Soviet Union and trying to pin it on economic mismanagement as if it were anything but the brutal sanctions preventing them from participating in global trade.
Here, Jimmy Carter agrees: https://www.reddit.com/r/northkorea/comments/1nki9kn/former_potus_admits_the_us_wanted_koreans_to/