5 Won Socialist Visitor

North Korea maintained separate currency systems for foreign visitors well into the late Cold War period, and this note belongs to that infrastructure — a denomination usable only by socialist-bloc tourists and trade delegates, distinct from the hard-currency certificates issued to capitalist visitors. The distinction mattered: where you spent your money determined what goods you could access, and the DPRK used that segregation to control both foreign exchange capture and the exposure of its citizens to outside economic influence.

The Foreign Trade Bank series of 1988 is among the last issued before North Korea began consolidating and eventually phasing out its visitor certificate system in the 1990s.