Final answer:
In totalitarian governments, the state holds absolute control over many areas of life, limiting personal freedoms and employing methods like censorship to maintain power. While such regimes are rarer today, North Korea is a well-known totalitarian state.
Step-by-step explanation:
In a totalitarian form of government, the state exerts complete control over many aspects of public and private life, including political, social, cultural, and even personal matters, leaving little room for individual autonomy and civil liberties. This type of government tends to employ rigorous means of control such as censorship, mass surveillance, and strict regulation of the press to maintain power and suppress dissent. It differs from a typical dictatorship through its comprehensive interference in personal lives and the use of an official ideology that is constantly reinforced through state-controlled media. In the past, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini were classic examples of totalitarian regimes.
Today, most countries have adopted some form of representative government, but a few can still be considered totalitarian. North Korea is widely cited as a contemporary example of such a regime, where the government controls almost all aspects of life and where citizens' rights are severely limited. Other countries may have certain features of totalitarianism, especially those with absolute monarchies or single-party states where power is heavily concentrated, although they might not be totalitarian in the strictest sense.