500 Won Sokkuram Bodhisattva

Issued as part of South Korea's first commemorative coin program, this piece was authorized amid a broader government push to assert cultural identity through official channels — the Sokkuram grotto, a UNESCO-recognized eighth-century Buddhist shrine near Gyeongju, had been undergoing a controversial Japanese-led restoration since the colonial period, and the newly independent Korean state was actively reclaiming its symbolic ownership of the site. Mintage was low and distribution largely limited to presentation sets, which explains the frequency of surviving specimens in original packaging.