But I guess due to the lack of landlords leeching unnecessary value off of tenants in the DPRK, people would have a decent amount of spending cash compared to a minimum wage worker in the US.

I’m going to guess this is what’s happening. The United States is such an evil country that they basically bribe their populace to not care about the war crimes they commit, but the US capitalists and landlords still can’t resist exploiting its citizens for profit, leading to even the most oppressed and imperialized socialist country having better quality of life, by virtue of them just actually caring about their own population.

I can’t say that’s it’s actually that much better than your average USian, especially because expensive tech goods are super easy to get here in the US compared to most countries, I imagine, but I do think that based on what you described, “saving up” for expensive consumer goods like that is legitimately reasonable in North Korea, as opposed to the United States, where your entire earning is dumped into your landlord’s pockets every month. Of course, actually saving up could still be impossible despite that, given issues like “the amount of money a phone could cost due to sanctions and the cost of international trade is more than a regular person could make in an entire lifetime”, but the fact they’ve put something together like this at all just shows the power of socialism when faced with adversity.