No, I look at the evidence provided, speculate about what’s missing, and then ask why it’s missing.

But that's the problem. You're just speculating.

If I visit america and then speculate that everything I'm seeing is actually fake and made up by an entire country of fucking actors purely for the benefit of pretending america is something it's not you would call me utterly deranged.

Is it the best place in the world to live? Fuck no it's not. Its been embargoed and the subject of economic warfare for decades, not to mention the literal genocide of one fifth of its population that the US performed. Its behaviour towards the US should not at all be surprising given this history, they never want to see it happen again. Imagine if 1 in 5 of every person you know was firebombed and 99% of the buildings in your country were razed to the ground and then some white anglo fucks on the internet just make up shit about you over and over and over again.

what exactly is happening to the Uigurs? Is it consensual? How can I verify?

Now? Fuck all is happening this ended like 2 fucking years ago and liberals are still going on about it. What did happen? A very serious crackdown and education program that involved mandatory schools where people deemed "at risk" (of becoming islamic extremists) were forced into a 5 day per week (they went home on weekends) education program.

Shit was very serious, terrorism was a real and major problem, bombings were happening once or twice a month and shit was seriously ramping up. This was being imported over the border with Afghanistan. This all stopped after the program.

They were then shut down. The US then proceeded to get out of afghanistan, as it no longer had any reason to be there. Here is a video of Col Lawrence Wilkerson saying that the cia were planning to do just that., keep in mind this man was Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State at the time of this video, which predates the explosion of uighur content online. Prior to the US suddenly having such an interesting in the rights of Uighurs it is also notable that the US was literally bombing them.

are people allowed to disagree publicly with the government? Why or why not? How can I independently verify?

Sure. Average people do all the time just look it up on Weibo. You could also just look up the culture of protest in the country (extremely frequent, activism is high, just not activism to literally overthrow the country). Gov does not give a shit about whether the average person disagrees with the government on various issues unless you happen to be a celebrity or millionaire/billionaire. The government cracks down extremely hard on the bourgeoisie and its representatives.

If you're looking for more realistic ways to interpret the DPRK then I think you should look at things like food security figures, improvements in agriculture, or for living standards look at things like the smartphone market and percentage of ownership. 50% or more of the country owns a smartphone, 6-8 million have subscriptions to services. This kind of figure will give you something closer to an idea of what reality is without the mess of propaganda from all sides. It's the kind of figure you can relate more closely to yourself, and to where western countries were 10-15 years ago. Here in the UK for example 2003-2005 we had roughly 50% smartphone ownership in the country.