1000 Won Death of Kim Il Sung

Issued in the immediate aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death on July 8, 1994, this piece was produced for the international collector market — North Korea had been minting gold and silver commemoratives for hard currency export since the 1970s, a practice that continues today under the Korea Münze und Medaillen agency and its successors. The domestic population had no access to such issues. Kim Il Sung died before the formal signing of the Agreed Framework with the United States, leaving a nuclear negotiation in mid-air and his son Kim Jong Il with an unresolved foreign policy crisis from the first weeks of succession.