10 Won Dryocopus Javensis

Issued as part of North Korea's hard-currency collector series of the late 1990s, this piece was never intended for domestic circulation. The DPRK mint produced silver commemoratives almost exclusively for export sale through foreign dealers, generating foreign exchange at a time when the country was in the grip of a catastrophic famine — the Arduous March — that killed an estimated 240,000 to 3.5 million people between 1994 and 1998.

The White-bellied Woodpecker (Dryocopus javensis) does range into the Korean peninsula, though its populations there are critically sparse.