50 Won

North Korean won notes of this period were not issued for domestic retail use in the conventional sense — the country operated a bifurcated currency system through much of the early 2000s, with ordinary citizens' access to banknotes tightly controlled through the Public Distribution System. Notes like this circulated in a heavily administered economy where price signals had little meaning.

The 2002 series predates the July 2002 economic reforms by a matter of months — those reforms, which introduced limited market pricing, briefly made denominations like this one functionally obsolete before a chaotic adjustment followed. The 2009 redenomination, which wiped two zeros from the currency and capped household exchange, rendered most pre-reform notes worthless overnight.