1000 Won 40 Years of the D.P.R.K.

Issued to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, founded September 9, 1948, this gold piece appeared during one of the regime's most economically precarious decades. By 1988, North Korea had already begun defaulting on its foreign debt — a crisis that had been building since the mid-1970s — while simultaneously pouring resources into the Seoul Olympics it refused to attend, following a failed bid for co-hosting rights.

The .9999 fineness places it among the purest gold issues of the period, almost certainly produced for hard-currency export rather than domestic circulation, where gold coinage had no practical role.