| 10 pcs lot 10x Korea P-35 x 1 Won 1988 UNC—Lot 10 pcs—Communist Visitor Currency—Great Leader's Gift Palace

LOT OF 10 PIECES

A relic of Cold War-era currency engineering, this 1988 North Korean Foreign Exchange Certificate was never meant for ordinary citizens — it was issued exclusively to visitors and diplomats from communist ("socialist") countries (Soviet bloc and China), and portrays the "castle" museum exhibiting hundreds of thousands of gifts to the Great Leader and his son.

Front

• Colors:
  • Background: pale lavender-pink
  • Dominant engraving: deep crimson-red
  • Accents: light blue (globe waterdrops logo)
• Denomination: numeral "1" in white, set within a large ornate red guilloche rosette
• Border: elaborate multi-layered lathe-work border in crimson
• Logo: globe-and-grain logo of the Foreign Trade Bank (left), in red and blue
• Issuer text: 조선민주주의인민공화국 / 무역은행 (Foreign Trade Bank of the DPRK)
• Denomination text: 일 원 (One Won)
• Date: 1988 (lower center)

Back

• Colors:
  • Background: pale lavender-pink
  • Dominant engraving: deep crimson-red
  • Accents: blue-grey (globe logo, coat of arms)
• Main vignette: International Friendship Exhibition museum complex on Mt. Myohyang — a sprawling traditional Korean palace-style complex set among forested hills
• Coat of arms: National Coat of Arms of North Korea (upper right)
• Logo: globe-and-grain Foreign Trade Bank logo (right)
• Header text: 외화와바꾼돈표 (Foreign Currency Exchange Certificate)
• Issuer text: 조선민주주의인민공화국무역은행 (Foreign Trade Bank of the DPRK)
• Denomination: 1 won / 일원
• Date: 1988

Currency for Use by Foreign Visitors

Family/Series: There were two types of currency for use by visitors, dated 1988

• For visitors from capitalist countries, P-23 through P-30
  • Chon notes (1 through 50 chon)
    • Blue regular issue
    • Purple colour, Issued during the Pyongyang Cultural Festival in 1995
    • Pink, coat of arms at left, issued during the Arirang Festival in 2002/2003
  • Won notes, sage green (1 through 50 won)
• For visitors from communist ("socialist") countries, P-31 through P-38
  • Chon notes in pink, coat of arms at right
  • Won notes in crimson red on lavender (this type)

Other Characteristics

• Catalog numbers: P-35; Numista N#204288
• Composition: Paper
• Size: 111 × 55 mm
• Issuing entity: Foreign Trade Bank of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
• Demonetized: 1992
• Currency: Second North Korean Won (1959–2009)

About North Korea

• Origin of name: "Korea" derives from the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392); "Joseon" (조선), the name used domestically, refers to the ancient Gojoseon kingdom
• Capital: Pyongyang (city pop. ~3.1 million; metro ~3.5 million)
  • Origin of name: "Flat land" or "Peaceful land" in Korean (평양, Pyong = flat/peaceful, Yang = land)
• Population: ~26 million (UN est.) — similar to Texas or Australia
• Area: 120,538 km² (46,540 mi²) — similar to Mississippi or Greece
• GDP per capita at PPP: ~$1,800 (highly estimated; no reliable official data)
• Main exports: Coal, iron ore, textiles, seafood (primarily to China)
• Borders: China (north), Russia (northeast), South Korea (south, DMZ)
• Official/spoken language: Korean
• Ethnicities: Korean (~100%)
• Memberships: United Nations (1991); Non-Aligned Movement (1975); G77
• Sovereignty:
  • Gojoseon and Three Kingdoms period (2333 BC–668 AD)
  • Unified Silla and Goryeo dynasty (668–1392)
  • Joseon dynasty (1392–1897)
  • Korean Empire (1897–1910)
  • Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945)
  • Soviet occupation of northern Korea (1945–1948)
  • Democratic People's Republic of Korea proclaimed (1948) — Kim Il-sung establishes the DPRK; Korean War (1950–1953) ends in armistice, not peace treaty
  • DPRK under Kim dynasty (1948–date) — this note issued during this period

North Korea Unfiltered

• The cult of the Kim family is the closest thing to a state religion on Earth. Every home and office is required by law to display framed portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, subject to official inspection. Citizens bow before statues and weep publicly at state ceremonies — behavior that defectors describe as both coerced and, for many, genuinely felt after a lifetime of total information control. Kim Il-sung holds the title Eternal President despite having died in 1994. The state ideology of Juche functions as a quasi-theology, with the Kims cast not merely as leaders but as the source of all national life.
• The parallel currency system depicted on this note no longer exists. Today, foreign visitors to North Korea transact in US dollars, euros, or Chinese yuan. Only one department store in Pyongyang — the Rakwon Department Store — allows visitors to exchange hard currency into local won and spend it alongside ordinary citizens.
• The famine of 1994–1998 — known in North Korea as the "Arduous March" — killed an estimated 240,000 to 3.5 million people. The government initially denied it was happening. Aid organizations were given limited and monitored access. The famine reshaped North Korean society, giving rise to informal markets (jangmadang) that persist to this day.
• Despite near-total isolation, North Korea has launched multiple satellites into orbit and maintains one of the largest standing armies on Earth — approximately 1.2 million active personnel.
• Room 39, a clandestine bureau operating out of the Korean Workers' Party headquarters in Pyongyang, is widely believed to have produced the "Superdollar" — counterfeit US $100 bills so technically sophisticated that they were nearly indistinguishable from genuine Federal Reserve notes. The US Secret Service estimated hundreds of millions of dollars' worth entered circulation before the US redesigned the $100 bill partly in response.

A Banknote That Was Never Meant for You, Citizen!

The Foreign Exchange Certificate system was North Korea's elegant solution to a hard-currency problem: how do you extract dollars, rubles, and deutschmarks from foreign visitors without letting ordinary citizens touch them? The answer was a parallel banknote — same denomination, same issuer, different colors, different world. Both types were redeemable only at Foreigners' Shops (외화상점), stocked with goods unavailable to the general population.

Mt. Myohyang: The Mountain of Gifts

The building on the reverse is the International Friendship Exhibition, a vast underground complex carved into Mt. Myohyang (묘향산 — "Mysterious Fragrance Mountain"). It was built in 1978 to house the staggering volume of over 220,000 gifts received by Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il from foreign dignitaries — including a bulletproof limousine from Stalin and a crocodile-leather briefcase from Fidel Castro. The complex spans multiple buildings, each dedicated to a different region of the world. Visitors must wear shoe covers and speak in hushed tones. Photography is forbidden. The mountain itself is considered sacred in Korean shamanic tradition — a fitting home for a monument to dynastic legitimacy.

1988: The Year of the Seoul Olympics North Korea Boycotted

This note was printed in 1988 — the same year South Korea hosted the Seoul Summer Olympics, an event North Korea boycotted after failing to secure co-hosting rights. While Seoul showcased its economic miracle to the world, Pyongyang issued this certificate to the socialist visitors still willing to come. The contrast is encoded in the paper.

Own This Document of a Parallel Economy

This P-35 socialist-visitor certificate is one of the most collectible North Korean issues precisely because of its specificity: it was printed for a defined ideological category of person, in a defined year, redeemable in a defined set of shops that no longer exist. Demonetized in 1992, it survived the collapse of the Soviet bloc by becoming worthless — and then, decades later, invaluable.

A crisp, uncirculated example of a closed economy's most candid admission: that not all money is created equal.