1000 Yen

The Bank of Chōsen — Japan's colonial central bank for the Korean peninsula — issued this 1000 Yen note in the final weeks of the Pacific War. The denomination itself signals crisis: no routine economy requires a note of this face value, and the wartime inflationary spiral across Japan's occupied territories made high-denomination emergency issues necessary across the board in 1945.

When Soviet and American forces divided the peninsula in August 1945, Bank of Chōsen notes became a monetary fault line. The Soviets allowed continued circulation in the north briefly before suppressing them; in the south, the U.S. Military Government initially honored them, creating a chaotic redemption problem that persisted into 1946.

P#42 is among the rarest in the Chōsen series — printed but largely unreleased before the surrender.