10 Won Blue Dragon

North Korea's commemorative coinage program of the late 1990s was largely directed at foreign collectors rather than domestic circulation — hard currency the state desperately needed following the catastrophic famine of 1994–1998, during which an estimated 600,000 to one million people died. These pieces were never intended to pass through Korean hands.

The Blue Dragon is one of the four cardinal directional symbols in Korean cosmology, governing the East. KM#108 is one of several issues from this year sharing the same specification.