I don't want to get philosophical on you, but what is consent, exactly. For example, in US, most would claim the current administration has consent of the populace to govern and yet, somehow, priorities of said populations are nowhere close to being met suggesting that either the population's consent is either imaginary, temporary, conditional, a phrase or an more interesting mix of those. And amusingly, we do not even have to search hard for it, because this administration has a funny habit of saying quiet part out lout ( https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2025/12... - "We don’t do foreign policy by poll, and our job is to carry out the directives of the President.").

On the other hand, we have Saudi Arabia, which, clearly, is not exactly a democracy. It may not be a dictatorship per se since it is a monarchy, but that monarchy rule is absolute ( so it is really a step away from NK ). And you may think they don't need population's consent, but you would be surprised how much consent you need when the population is used to 'harsh but oil is flowing so we get something out of it' trade off.

In other words, I am not saying you are wrong, but you may want to re-consider your priors.