1 Yen

The Bank of Chosen — Japan's colonial central bank for the Korean peninsula — issued this note in the final months of the Pacific War, when material shortages had already degraded paper quality across the Japanese printing system. By 1945, the Government Printing Bureau in Tokyo was producing currency under sustained Allied bombing, and the physical consistency of late-war output reflects those conditions.

When Soviet and American forces divided the peninsula in August 1945, Bank of Chosen notes remained in circulation on both sides of the 38th parallel for months, creating serious monetary instability before separate currency regimes were imposed.