Seen at Unification Observatory in Paju. Various banknotes, North Korean series 1992. In North Korea, it is illegal, and unthinkable, to fold the banknotes with the crease covering any part of Kim Il-sung's portrait. The bottom right is a ?1 banknote depicting a flower girl. Her story is based on a real Japanese colonial-era flower girl who sold flowers to make ends meet, in face of hardships from Japanese landlords. But North Korea turned her story into an often-hyped "Revolutionary Drama" where she joins her older brother, returning from anti-Japanese guerrila warfare, for a communist revolution. North Korean won used to be fixed at ?2.16 to the US dollar, as February 16th is Kim Jong-il's birthday. But it eventually floated to an official rate of ?153 per US dollar, and black market rates got so lousy that a North Korean won may be worth even less than a South Korean won, which was trading at this time at over ?1,500 per US dollar, having been devalued in the previous month or two.

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Postcard images, printed paper, colored paper, US stamp, currency bit and brad on cardstock.