N Korea is just one example.
One cannot generalize from one
when there are many.
No. There is only North Korea, the USSR, and the Khmer Rouge. It is intrinsically impossible for a socialist policy to be anything other than Stalinist/Juche/Khmer Rouge oppression by definition. Any other example is either
exactly like Stalin's Soviet Union, or not socialist.
Any policy that is called "socialist" can therefore be defined as leading inevitably towards one of those three outcomes, because "socialism" is defined to
be only one of these three possible forms of government (which are really one and the same).
Therefore, when AOC calls herself a "democratic socialist" and her policy proposals "socialism", she can only ever be meaning that she aspires to turn the US into Stalin's USSR, Kim's North Korea, or Pol Pot's Cambodia. Because those are the only possible modes in which "socialist" policies can be enacted, and the only possible outcomes for any kind of policy that is being called "socialist".