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500 Mun
| Issuer | Keijo-Pusan Railway Company |
|---|---|
| Year | 1900 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Mun (1633-1892) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Vertically oriented note framed by an orange guilloche border enclosing the entire field. At the upper centre, a small vignette depicts a building, likely a station or administrative structure associated with the railway company. The denomination 五百文 (500 Mun) is rendered in bold brushwork at the centre, flanked by vertical columns of Chinese and Korean text carrying conditions of issue and issuer details, with a large black cancellation punch hole struck through the lower centre. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | 釜山京釜鐵道株式會社支部 引換吟 發行者 京釜鐵道株式會社支員人合後代 梅田増兵衛 ｂ025532 |
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| Comments |
The Keijo-Pusan Railway Company — known in Korean as the Gyeongbu Railway — was a Japanese-backed private enterprise chartered in 1899 to build the line connecting Seoul (then Keijo) to Busan. Construction financing was genuinely precarious in those early years, and the company issued scrip notes to manage payments along the route before the line was operational. This 500 Mun piece is an artifact of that bridging period.
The Mun had already been effectively displaced as Korea's primary currency unit by this point, making the denomination choice unusual — possibly a deliberate gesture toward local acceptance rather than any practical monetary calculation.