500 Won Football World Cup

North Korea issued a wave of commemorative silver pieces through the 1990s explicitly for the foreign hard-currency collector market — domestic circulation was never the intent. This 500 Won piece tied to football's World Cup was part of that program, produced at a time when the DPRK was simultaneously experiencing its worst famine in modern history, with an estimated 240,000 to 3.5 million deaths between 1994 and 1998. The coins were sold abroad through state-controlled numismatic agencies while the country received international food aid.