The obsession with mobile phones among
younger people has extended into the borders of North Korea, prompting many
university students to go beyond their means to own a phone. As the country’s
pseudo-private sector continues to grow, the trend of evaluating people based
on their wealth and possessions is becoming more prevalent, prompting students
to purchase phones even if they cannot afford them.
“These days, a lot of university students stubbornly
ask their parents to get them mobile phones, and parents are often half-forced
into buying them,” a source from Yanggang Province told Daily NK on Tuesday.
“This is because they believe you need to have a phone to make sure people
don’t look down on you.”
A source in North Hamgyong Province
corroborated this news.
“Even if your family is really poor,
students think they still need to have a mobile phone,” the source said. “If it
looks like you’re hard up, people might look down on you, and this doesn’t help
down the line when you’re trying to get a job.”
An average phone sold at mobile
telecommunication stores sells for roughly 1,300 RMB (1.56 million KPW), while
the ‘Arirang Touch’ (smartphone), said to be developed by the North, fetches
2,800 RMB (3.3 million KPW).
Given that 1 kilogram of rice, staple of
the North Korean diet, at Hyesan Market in Yanggang Province trades for 5,000
KPW, an average mobile phone is worth roughly 300 kilograms of rice, while the
Arirang smartphone would be in exchange for 660 kilograms.
And yet, looking at the current
situation at Hyesan Agriculture University, an institution attracting students
from across the country, where “almost all students who live in the
dormitories have mobile phones,” sales show no signs of flagging.
“But some simply carry it around for show
even though they can’t afford to use it because of the steep charges,” she
pointed out.
