1 Won Nobel Prize in Medicine, Aluminium

North Korea issued a series of aluminum commemoratives around 2001 targeting the foreign collector market rather than domestic circulation — hard currency generation, not numismatic tradition, was the explicit motive. The Nobel Prize in Medicine series sits within that output, produced in negligible quantities and rarely encountered in anything but mint state simply because no North Korean citizen ever handled one.

KM#209a designates the aluminum variant, struck alongside a companion issue in a different metal, a common practice in DPRK commemorative production of this period.