South Korean Won (KRW)

About the South Korean Won

The South Korean Won (KRW) is the official currency of South Korea (the Republic of Korea), issued by the Bank of Korea and written with the symbol ₩. It is legal tender throughout the country and is used nowhere else as an official currency. Unusually among major currencies, the won has no circulating minor unit: ISO 4217 records zero decimal places for KRW, so everyday cash prices are quoted in whole won.

The won is a free-floating currency. In December 1997 the daily fluctuation limits on the interbank exchange rate were abolished and Korea's exchange rate system shifted to a free float, replacing the Market Average Exchange Rate System that had operated since March 1990. Under the earlier system the interbank spot rate could move only within set limits around each day's basic exchange rate; since the shift, the won's value has in principle been determined by market forces.

The present won dates from the currency reform of 10 June 1962 — the Third Currency Reform in the Bank of Korea's own account — which replaced the hwan at a ratio of ten hwan to one won and prohibited further circulation of hwan-denominated money. The Bank issued the new currency in six note denominations, from 1 to 500 won, and added 10- and 50-jeon notes on 1 December 1962 for low-value transactions, even as hwan coins already in public hands stayed legal tender for over a decade longer, until March 1975.

The won ranks among the world's most actively traded currencies. In the Bank for International Settlements' 2025 Triennial Central Bank Survey, carried out in April 2025, the won was the twelfth most traded currency worldwide, appearing on one side of foreign-exchange transactions averaging about $171 billion per day — roughly a 2% share of global turnover, in which shares sum to 200% because every trade involves two currencies. That placed it just behind the Indian rupee and ahead of the Swedish krona.

Cash circulates in four banknote denominations — ₩1,000, ₩5,000, ₩10,000 and ₩50,000 — and six coin denominations from ₩1 to ₩500. The notes portray figures from Korean history: the ₩1,000 note the scholar Toegye Yi Hwang, the ₩5,000 note Yulgok Yi I, the ₩10,000 note King Sejong the Great, and the ₩50,000 note the artist Shin Saimdang. The current 5,000-won note was first issued in January 2006, the 1,000- and 10,000-won notes in January 2007, and the 50,000-won note on 23 June 2009.