North Korean middle schoolers flock to buy MP7 and MP8 learning devices as status symbols

Electronic study aids priced at $97–$138 become student “necessities” in Hamhung as parents see them as cheaper alternatives to private tutors costing up to $41 monthly per subject.

A source in South Hamgyong province told Daily NK recently that many graduating middle school students set to enter high school “have electronic learning devices,” and that marketplaces “are doing a brisk trade in not only MP7s and MP8s, but also SD cards for learning foreign languages.”

Marketplaces offer new items and “A-grade” used items that are as good as new, with MP7s and MP8s usually selling for between 700 and 1,000 Chinese yuan ($97–$138).

According to the source, middle school students ask their parents to buy them MP7s and MP8s, arguing that they are “study necessities” because they can use them to repeatedly study English, Chinese or other foreign languages in audio and text format.

Students at Provincial Middle School No. 1 — a school for the gifted — and middle schools in downtown Hamhung especially consider MP7s and MP8s to be necessities.

“Just as young people nowadays carry around their mobile phones to show off even if they can’t actually use them because they can’t afford the bill, high school students always carry around their MP7s and MP8s to flaunt them.” In other words, students carry MP7s and MP8s to show off that “they have one, too,” even if they also use them to study.

Parents also know that MP7s and MP8s are becoming “necessities” among students and, as much as possible, try to buy them for their children in hopes that the devices will improve their school grades.

One reason for this is the cost of private education.

“If you hire a tutor, it costs 100 to 300 yuan ($14–$41) a month per subject, but if you buy an MP7 or MP8, your children can study foreign languages on their own without a tutor, and you can make even more use of them if you purchase or share SD cards with other study materials, so purchasing a device is better for many reasons, including price,” the source said. “So most parents who can afford them buy them.”

However, poorer families still find purchasing such devices to be a heavy burden.

In rural communities and among the urban poor, people increasingly sneer at the wave of MP7 and MP8 purchases. According to the source, such people typically say that studying “is about smarts and effort, not machines,” and that they “won’t buy such devices when 700 to 1,000 yuan can buy several months of rice.”

Some people even say that students use their devices to secretly watch banned content from the outside world, which is prohibited by the North Korean authorities, rather than to study.