Yes and no. As a North Korean citizen you were definitely better off in the 60s, around the same (better off in some respects, worse off in others) in the 70s and early 80s, and worse off in the 90s, than you are now.
To start off, I mostly use a rather nice book written by a Soviet-born North Korean expert Andrei Lankov - "The Real North Korea", as well as Victor Cha's "The Impossible State", and Bradley Martin's "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader".

First of all, Kim Il-Sung served as the leader of North Korea for a very long time - from 1948 to 1994, whereas his son was "on the throne" for 17 years.

In general, if we are to simplify though, the quality of life an average North Korean citizen was not drastically different from what we have now - but that just serves to demonstrate how North Korea fell out of pace of development over the last 30 or 40 years. In relative terms (when compared to neighboring countries or the rest of the world), you were better off as a North Korean citizen back in the 1960s rather than today.

For an average North Korean of the 1950s life didn't look especially bleak. Your country was modernizing and the economy was growing, ensuring both an increase in work output and living standards. The whole socialist system was novel and there was a fair deal of public enthusiasm, as people back then did not have the benefit of hindsight. It was not a democratic system, to be sure, but the population mostly consisted of farmers and their children who were never really exposed to democracy - even in theory. In this respect, the system (both economic and political) imposed by Kim Il-Sung was a marketable improvement over everything that came before it (a feudal monarchy and a brutal colonial regime).

In comparison, the South Korean system definitely did not look particularly inviting at the time. North Korea possessed one of the most sophisticated and well-developed industrial bases in the pre-war continental Asia, whereas South Korea (or what would later become South Korea) was always relegated to being an agricultural backwater. Sure, the Korean War did lead to the destruction of a large portion of North's industrial capacity, but most of it was quickly rebuilt through generous Soviet and Chinese help.

The North Koreans of the 1960s and early 1970s were better fed, better educated, and consumed more electricity than their brethren to the South. In terms of freedoms the Southerners were always better off - even at its most brutal the regime of Syngman Rhee was still more permissive than its counterpart in the North. It was still brutal (for example more people were repressed for political reasons in the South between 1945 and 1955) and had a much less equal distribution of wealth, but not nearly as brutal and repressive as any of the North Korean regimes.

Economically, as I said, North Korea was ahead of South - indeed, it even accepted thousands of Chinese (PRC) refugees than fled to escape famine and chaos that resulted from the Great Leap Forward in the early 60s. They were mostly given housing and assigned to some sort of a job.

In other areas Kim Il-Sung's North Korea of 1960s vintage also demonstrated considerable successes in areas such as education and health care - in fact the life expectancy of your average North Korean peaked at 72 in early 90s (just before a period of famine brought it down) - which is only marginally lower than in the South and massively higher than the average life expectancy for countries with similar levels of GDP per capita (today it is somewhere in the mid-60s, which is still remarkably high for such a poor country). Same applies to things like child mortality.

Education was similarly good - almost every single North Korea citizen possess basic literacy and numeracy skills - that applied both to Kim Il-Sung's North Korea, and today.

All in all, until the late 1960s it was hard to see why would anyone prefer to live in the South if given an opportunity to settle in the North instead.

It was just as totalitarian during Kim Il-Sung's day as during the rule of his son and grandson. It went from totalitarian rule by Imperial Japan, to a very bloody, destructive war, to a totalitarian state ruled by Kim Il-Sung. The key difference is that it wasn't as impoverished. In fact, for most of Kim Il-Sung's rule, North Korea was in better shape economically than South Korea. South Korea's GDP didn't surpass North Korea's GDP until about 1972, but of course since then South Korea has had incredible economic growth and is the 11th largest economy around the globe, with per capita GDP of $35,485. North Korea's, by comparison is 125th largest economy with a per capita GDP of $1,800. North Korea's economy has shrunk in the last 40 years. They took a big hit when the Soviet Union fell. Their economy had received a lot of support from the USSR, and that was greatly reduced by the fall. China also sends them aid but has been distancing itself from them. These factors combined to result in a series of famines in North Korea in the 1990s and the 21st century, which killed millions. There was nothing so deadly during Kim Il-Sung's reign but that's more due to outside forces and less due to any skills of Kim Il-Sung's.