5 Won Titanic

North Korea's hard-currency commemorative program, active through the 1990s and 2000s, existed almost entirely for foreign exchange — these coins were never intended to circulate within the DPRK and were sold almost exclusively to overseas collectors through intermediary dealers, often routed through Chinese and European distributors. The regime used Western cultural subjects precisely because they sold.

The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, with the loss of over 1,500 lives — its appeal to a coin-buying market had been thoroughly primed by James Cameron's 1997 film, and Pyongyang moved quickly to capitalize on that interest.