5 Won SS Grossherzog Friedrich August

The SS Grossherzog Friedrich August was a German lightship, not a passenger vessel or warship — an unusual subject for a commemorative coin from Pyongyang. North Korea's foreign currency program, active from the 1970s onward, produced coins almost exclusively for export sale to Western collectors, generating hard currency the state desperately needed under international sanctions. The ships series falls squarely into that commercial logic.

The original lightship served in German waters in the early twentieth century before being converted and eventually preserved as a museum vessel in Elsfleth, Germany.