North Korea's hard-currency commemorative program of the 1990s was explicitly designed to generate foreign exchange, with pieces sold exclusively to overseas collectors and never intended for domestic circulation. The Sydney Games didn't open until 2000, making this a three-year anticipatory issue — aggressive even by the standards of a program notorious for speculative release schedules.
North Korea's hard-currency commemorative program of the 1990s was explicitly designed to generate foreign exchange, with pieces sold exclusively to overseas collectors and never intended for domestic circulation. The Sydney Games didn't open until 2000, making this a three-year anticipatory issue — aggressive even by the standards of a program notorious for speculative release schedules.