100 Won Robinson Crusoe

North Korea's foreign currency collectibles program, active from the 1980s onward, was designed almost entirely to generate hard currency from overseas collectors rather than to serve any domestic function. These pieces never circulated inside the DPRK. The Robinson Crusoe subject — drawn from Defoe's 1719 novel — appears across several international mint programs of the 1990s, and North Korea licensed comparable literary and wildlife themes through intermediary dealers, primarily based in Germany and Austria, who handled distribution entirely outside the country.