1 Yen

The Bank of Korea was established in 1909 under Japanese colonial supervision, effectively displacing the Dai-Han Bank and consolidating Japanese financial control over the peninsula ahead of formal annexation in 1910. This note belongs to that transitional moment — the institution's name was Korean, but the monetary architecture was entirely Japanese. Within a year of issue, the Bank of Korea was renamed the Bank of Chōsen and the political fiction of Korean financial autonomy was abandoned entirely.

Notes from this first 1909 series are genuinely scarce in any condition, having circulated hard through decades of colonial-era commerce.