Lookup socialism on wikipedia. You will find it is not what you think it is.
Socialism includes "democratic socialism", "social democracy" and a lot more, from quasi-anarchism to quasi-capitalism.
North European countries are aocial democracies, which is counted as socialism.
The extreme forms of socialism you are thinking of exist nowhere except north korea at the present time. And yet neocapitalist use them to discredit aocialism as a whole pretending that socialism only means that.
It doesn't, and whoever says it does is either in bad faith or needs to study more.