5 Cents Pusan; Officers' Open Mess

Pusan Officers' Open Mess scrip is among the more obscure categories of Korean War-era military payment — not MPC, not Federal Reserve, but a locally issued mess facility token in paper form. APO 96259 was the Pusan area postal address during the occupation and war period, and mess scrip like this circulated entirely within the confines of the issuing club, functioning as a cashless system to prevent currency leakage into the local Korean economy.

These were produced in small quantities by individual units or facilities, not by any central authority, and survival rates are low — most were destroyed or discarded when the facility closed or personnel rotated out.