you are forgetting one thing: scale. NK can do horrific things to its citizens but it is primarily isolated on its one section of the Korean peninsula, Cocaro on the other hand brutilizes populations from Africa to the Caribbean to Corea and northern china all while putting on a happy face. regarding the African world war, what the Carolinas is currently doing to Africa and South America respectively surely exceeds the brutality of that conflict.North Korea, "African World War"; are we jokes to you?
Confederation of the Carolinas, while bad, doesn't seem worse than those.
Remember, just because they aren't the RU, doesn't mean they don't do heinous shit on a regular basis just because they can