1000 Won

South Korea's earliest paper currency was printed in Japan — a practical necessity given that the newly established Bank of Korea had no domestic printing infrastructure when the won was introduced in 1950. The National Printing Bureau in Tokyo had the capacity; geopolitics made the arrangement awkward but unavoidable. The Korean War, which began just weeks after the Bank of Korea's founding, created urgent demand for notes that the peninsula itself could not supply.

Wartime inflation hit hard. By 1953 the won had collapsed sufficiently to necessitate the hwan reform, which replaced it at 100:1. Notes from this series that survived did so largely outside normal circulation channels.