It’s easy to overestimate the importance of politics in North Korean society and forget that for the majority that lives in the country, the Kim state is a marginal concern. Most North Korean people go to work or school, date, enjoy leisure time (usually with a few beers) and live their lives seldom questioning the society they were born in. 

Kim Young-sook (a pseudonym) was one such person, a daughter of a well-to-do family, reasonably successful in all her undertakings and, I would say, pretty typical.