20 Sen

The Bank of Chōsen was established in 1909 under Japanese colonial administration, replacing the Dai-Ichi Bank notes that had circulated since 1902. This 20 Sen issue belongs to a low-denomination series intended primarily for everyday retail transaction in Korea, where Japanese monetary policy was being actively used to displace Chinese copper cash and older Korean currency forms still moving through rural markets.

Printing by the Chōsen Printing Bureau — the colonial government's own facility in Seoul — kept production under direct administrative control rather than contracting to Japanese metropolitan printers. Small-denomination notes from this period suffered heavy wear and were routinely withdrawn; surviving examples in collectible grades are considerably harder to find than the higher denominations of the same series.