10 Won Kim Il Sung birthplace

Issued to mark the 80th birthday of Kim Il Sung, this coin was part of a broader commemorative program released as the DPRK was entering one of its most acute periods of economic contraction — Soviet subsidies had effectively ended with the USSR's collapse, and the country was moving toward the famine years of the mid-1990s. Hard currency was scarce, and commemorative issues like this one were produced largely for export sale to foreign collectors rather than domestic circulation.

The birthplace in question is Mangyongdae, a village on the outskirts of Pyongyang now maintained as a national shrine.