50 Chon Socialist Visitor

North Korea ran a parallel currency system for decades, issuing separate notes for foreign visitors to prevent hard currency from mixing with the domestic won supply. This 50 Chon is part of the "socialist visitor" series — a distinction that mattered, since notes issued to visitors from capitalist countries carried different color coding and were not interchangeable at the same rate. The Foreign Trade Bank administered the system, which effectively let the state capture foreign exchange while keeping ordinary citizens entirely insulated from it.

The series was abolished in the early 2000s as the system became increasingly unworkable following the economic collapses of the 1990s.