5 Chon

Bank of Joseon was the central bank of Japanese-administered Korea, and this note was printed in April 1945 — the final months of the Pacific War — yet carries a 1949 issue date. The four-year gap reflects the political chaos of liberation, US military administration, and the eventual partition of the peninsula; Joseon Bank notes continued circulating in the South under American occupation authority until the Bank of Korea replaced the institution in 1950.

The extreme small format was deliberate: low-denomination coins were essentially unavailable by 1945, and these notes substituted for metal currency that wartime Japan had long since melted down for munitions.