The Bank of Korea (BOK) said Wednesday it will begin a public survey soon to decide on the appearance of the new 50,000-won and 100,000-won banknotes, which are likely to debut as early as in 2008.

Based on the survey results, the bank will set up an advisory committee of banknote designers and history professors to design the bills, according to BOK officials.

Top candidates for the models of the new notes include Kim Koo, an independence fighter during Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), Yoo Kwan-soon, a female independence fighter, and Chang Yong-sil, a scientist during the rule of King Sejong (1418-1450).

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/biz/200703...18000811910.htm

Its pretty cool that they re getting the public involved with the design process....

interesting...so it might be a good idea to snap up a few of the new bills as soon as they come out. i can't imagine they'll be printing very many of them if they're only going to turn around and print a new series of redenominated notes. 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 won, maybe?

Seems awfully similar to what Russia did with the 1995 series and then later in 1997, the banknotes were redominated with three zeros gone. I have been looking for the 1995 500,000 rubles but that proved to be amazingly difficult.

It's about time they came out with some higher denominations. That was a real annoyance to carry around so many 10,000 Won notes. Virtually every place you went had counting machines to count the bills when you paid for things.

I thought it was ridiculous in China carrying around wads of 100 Yuan notes, worth more than Korean money though. The most worthless currency I have used was Japanese yen, but I never had more than a couple of thousand of them at a time.

heheh...it made me feel rich. i used to teach english and i was always paid with fat envelopes full of cash. big fat wads of cash with plenty of zeros. of course, i was only 16 and i blew it all on soju, poolhalls, and noraebang.

The highest face value of Chinese Yuan is 100 yuan which is 12.92 USD, 10,000 Korean won = 10.58 USD and 10,000 Japanese yen = 85.55 USD. The most worthless?

You should try using Indonesia Rupiah. You will definitely enjoy them and make you feel rich. The largest denomination is a 100,000 Rupiah ( worth US$10.848 ). Whenever I go for a holiday in Indonesia, after changing some money at a local money changer, I fell really good with the bundle of money with so many zeros.

Surely the most bizzare note ever was the Yugoslavian 500000000000 Dinar note, worth about £50 in 1993 I presume?

You could never own that in £'s I would imagine the whole lot currently in circulation aren't worth that much