1 Won Chinese Dragon Boat

North Korea issued a small run of commemorative pieces in the early 2000s aimed squarely at the collector export market — hard currency the regime badly needed following the economic collapse of the 1990s, when the public distribution system failed and famine killed an estimated 240,000 to 3.5 million people. These coins never circulated domestically in any meaningful sense.

The dragon boat motif references the Duanwu Festival tradition with roots in the legend of Qu Yuan, the Warring States-period poet whose death in 278 BC the race is said to commemorate — an odd cultural borrowing for Pyongyang, given the regime's otherwise aggressive suppression of outside traditions.