1 Won Skaters

North Korea's commemorative output in the late 1990s and early 2000s was produced almost entirely for the foreign collector market, not domestic circulation — hard currency earned through coin sales to overseas dealers was a meaningful revenue stream for the regime during the post-Soviet economic collapse that killed an estimated 600,000 to one million North Koreans in the preceding famine years. Pyongyang's mint issued dozens of sporting themes across this period, figure skating among them.

Brass examples of this type are the more commonly encountered variant; a silver version also exists in the series.