My answer was not shallow, your question was based on a false premise - that North Korea is a Communist country and that South Korea got to be what is was by its own efforts.
Neither is the case, as my answer attempted to point out.
Whatever North Korea set out to be, it has long left that path
Communism has never been more than a dream - the end of a long, hard road
I know nothing of what Mr Warmbier did, but his punishment is no worse nor better that that meted out so, say, opponents of Assad over the decades, or those who stood up to the Greek Colonels - or nearer to home - those who stood up to Augusto Pinochet, who was hailed as a hero of democracy by our Prime Minister, who went on to describe the seeking to bring him to trial for mass murder, rape and torture of many thousands of young people as "running a police state".
Would you hold Papadopoulos or Pinochet or Assad (or even Trump) as shining examples of the system you seem so keen on supporting - I doubt it?
Then why produce a country that was never given a chance to even start to recover from a genocidal war imposed on it by "the democratic nations" aa an example of a goal that was never even embarked on?
The same, incidentally, goes for states like Cuba who survived outside intervention and embargo instated by the worlds most powerful nation (90 miles from its doorstep) for over sixty years.
Rather like tying someone to a tree and jeering at them because they won't fight
Jim Carroll