Catalog
50 Mun
| Issuer | Keijo-Pusan Railway Company |
|---|---|
| Year | 1900 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Vertically oriented note printed in blue on cream paper, with a decorative guilloche border running the full perimeter. A central vignette at the upper portion depicts a steam locomotive within a framed oval. The large-format Chinese character denomination 五拾文 is printed in bold black intaglio-style script at the center, flanked by vertical columns of Japanese and Korean text. A large black cancellation punch appears at the lower center, with a red seal impression visible at the lower left. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | 引換所 京釜鉄道株式会社 発行者 京釜鉄道株式会社代 福田増兵衛 は644018 |
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| Comments |
The Keijo-Pusan Railway Company — operating Korea's first modern rail line connecting Seoul (then Keijo under Japanese-influenced naming) to Busan — issued scrip notes to manage small transactions along the line during a period when reliable small-denomination coinage was chronically scarce across the peninsula. The railway itself was a joint Japanese-Korean venture chartered in 1899, with Japanese commercial interests holding decisive control from the outset.
The "mun" denomination is an anachronism by 1900 — Korea's monetary system had been formally restructured under the 1892 New Coinage Regulations, yet older unit names persisted in informal commercial use, particularly in scrip. This note predates Japan's formal annexation of Korea by a decade.