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500 Mun
| Issuer | Keijo-Pusan Railway Company |
|---|---|
| Year | 1900 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 500 Mun |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Vertically oriented note framed by an orange guilloche border enclosing the entire field. At the upper centre, a small vignette depicts a building, likely a station or administrative structure associated with the railway company. The denomination 五百文 (500 Mun) is rendered in bold brushwork at the centre, flanked by vertical columns of Chinese and Korean text carrying conditions of issue and issuer details, with a large black cancellation punch hole struck through the lower centre. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 五百文 京 이수표로가저오시면직시행건고문부통감율 황경연일본돈으로시가의및이응할세요오서 |
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| Comments |
The Keijo-Pusan Railway Company — known in Korean as the Gyeongbu Railway — was a Japanese-backed private enterprise chartered in 1899 to build the line connecting Seoul (then Keijo) to Busan. Construction financing was genuinely precarious in those early years, and the company issued scrip notes to manage payments along the route before the line was operational. This 500 Mun piece is an artifact of that bridging period.
The Mun had already been effectively displaced as Korea's primary currency unit by this point, making the denomination choice unusual — possibly a deliberate gesture toward local acceptance rather than any practical monetary calculation.