Using 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 has nothing to do with anonymity or the dark web, it's public DNS; which as you say is heavily logged.
Of course they have fibre. The mental mistake is to think their isolationism has meant that their society has been walled off from the 21st Century. They trade with and have access to any market that doesn't pander to US bullying brought about by its cold war rhetoric over dealing with communist states. If they want infrastructure, they'll build it, mobile phones they'll get them, nuclear weapons they'll.. erm...
The idea that the US keeps these places bottled up and away from the international markets is a propaganda myth. The irony is that if we had actually allowed trade with them, they'd probably have opened up a long time ago and the NSA/CIA would have a far greater awareness of what they were up to because they'd be using Cisco IP just like everyone else the US "doesn't" spy on.
Don't get me wrong here; I'm no supporter or apologiser for the despotic little weasel.
If the North attacked the South, the North would exist for about 48 hours before the US had conducted regime change. Then there would be a protracted, bloody period while 60 years of social brainwashing was ironed out of the radical percentage of the population.
The difference between now and the 80's is that if they did it on a whim
(i.e. weren't provoked
), China wouldn't support them this time.
(Needless to say, the rest of the world would prefer the north side to do that.)
