100 Yen

The Bank of Chōsen — Japan's colonial central bank for Korea — issued this note in the final year of the Pacific War, when the Japanese government was financing military operations through aggressive currency expansion across its occupied territories. Notes printed in 1945 were often released into circulation under conditions of severe inflation and supply disruption, making orderly redemption after Japan's August surrender essentially impossible.

Post-liberation, these notes were rendered inconvertible almost immediately. Many were simply abandoned or destroyed, which counterintuitively affects survivor populations in both directions — some denominations are scarce, others flooded out of Korean hoards decades later.