20 Won Year of the Snake

North Korea has issued Chinese zodiac commemoratives sporadically since the early 2000s, primarily targeting the foreign collector market rather than domestic circulation — hard currency generation, not monetary function. These pieces were never intended to pass through North Korean hands.

KM# 1184 is one of the more obscure entries in the DPRK's collector coinage program, with distribution routed almost entirely through a small network of sanctioned intermediary dealers operating out of Macau and Beijing.