500 Won 41st World Table Tennis Championships

The 41st World Table Tennis Championships were held in Chiba, Japan in 1991 — a tournament made politically extraordinary when North and South Korean players competed together as a unified Korean team for the first time. That joint team, fielded under the name "Korea," defeated China in the women's team final, ending China's decade-long dominance of the event.

Pyongyang issued several commemorative silver pieces tied to the championships, and KM#45 belongs to that broader program. The unified team's victory was one of the few moments of inter-Korean cooperation celebrated simultaneously by both governments during the Cold War's dying months.