1000 Won Handball

Issued to commemorate the 1988 Seoul Olympics, this piece was part of a multi-year, multi-denomination program the Bank of Korea launched beginning in 1982 — one of the most ambitious Olympic coinage programs any host nation had undertaken at that point. South Korea used the series partly as a foreign exchange vehicle, with sets marketed aggressively to international collectors well before the Games opened.

Handball was included as a nod to its popularity in Europe and its growing amateur base in Korea, where the national team would go on to win gold in the women's event at Seoul.