20 Won Saxonia

Saxonia was a German dredging and mining equipment manufacturer whose machinery was central to North Korea's gold and coal extraction operations during the post-Soviet period, when hard currency had become desperately scarce and barter agreements with foreign firms substituted for cash trade. This coin is believed to have been issued as part of a trade-credit or commemorative arrangement rather than general circulation — North Korea produced numerous brass and cupronickel pieces in the early 2000s explicitly for foreign exchange and collector export, a revenue stream the regime used to circumvent sanctions-era dollar shortages.