THE 1978 SOUTH KOREAN COMMEMORATIVE COIN RIOT

South Korean coin enthusiast Mark Lovmo of Minneapolis writes:

The story behind the manufacture and release of these two South Korean commemorative coins is a roller coaster ride of tight deadlines and inadequacies at the Mint; all thrown in with a meddling big-shot friend of the president of the country. And if it had not been for a last-minute policy exception, the whole thing might not have happened at all. Such instability surrounding South Korea’s commemorative coin production was apparently the modal state of affairs in the late 1970s. Leading up to the 1978 release of these coins, the Korean Mint was still quite new to advanced coin manufacturing processes involving the production of high quality proof coins, and had particular problems in both engraving and in the creation of the critical pieces of tool steel for the manufacture of the master dies. Despite the problems, the coins were released on schedule, and the silver coin of this series became an overnight sensation, making them some of the most popular commemorative coins ever issued in South Korea.

As the planning and design phase for the new commemoratives got underway, the Chairman for the shooting championships, Pak Jong-gyu, made an urgent request to the Bank of Korea that priority be given to the commemorative coins being made for the event that he was organizing. Pak strongly requested that the Mint redouble its efforts to have the Shooting Championships coins ready for release before June 1978 in order not to disrupt the distribution and marketing schedule for the coins. In response to this request, the Mint soon shifted the focus of its design work to preparing the shooting championships coins.

What followed, from March to July 1977, were five months of tedious back-and-forth consultations with Chairman Pak over the coin designs as the Bank of Korea and the Komsco team got bogged down attempting to satisfy the Chairman’s desires concerning the coins’ appearance down to the tiniest detail. Having a micromanaging third party inserting itself between the Komsco team and the Bank of Korea was an unusual and frustrating experience that required an extra effort on the part of the practitioners involved. Despite this difficulty, the design team finalized work on two designs that ultimately met with Pak’s approval.

By July 25th, the proposed coins also had the approval of the Governor of the Bank of Korea, Kim Sung-hwan. Governor Kim announced that two coins were to make up the Shooting Championships commemorative issue: A 2,500 Won silver coin featuring the image of the Muyong mounted archer, and a 500 Won coin displaying the design of the standing rifle competitor. The 2,500 Won Silver coin design was the work of senior Komsco designers Kang Bak and Jo Byung-soo, while junior designers, Ryu Taek-soo ( 류택수 ) and Lee Ye-soo ( 이예수 ) co-designed the images on the 500 Won coin.

During its final review of their event’s commemorative coin designs, the Shooting Championships committee requested a change to the coins’ planned diameter sizes and denomination. The Bank of Korea subsequently changed the specifications, enlarging the silver coin’s diameter from 32mm to 35mm, and the value from 2,500 Won to 5,000 Won. The denomination of the 500 Won coin remained unchanged but its diameter size was also increased, from 30mm to 32mm.

Minting and Release of the Coins
Beginning on April 7, 1978 and over the following two months, the Korean Mint struck the two Shooting Championships coins according to the mandated mintages and finishes for both coins. The Mint determined that the cost per unit to mint the 5,000 Won silver coins was 3,849 won, 62 jeon each; and each of the 500 Won copper nickel coins cost 179 won, 10 jeon.

The minting of the Shooting Championships commemoratives saw the strictest quality-control measures applied to South Korean coins up to that time; and accounting for errors and damaged coins, 97.3% of the total coins of the official mintage were actually issued. These commemoratives were also unique in that the 5,000 Won coin was South Korea’s first domestically-minted, and locally-released, silver coin of legal tender. The Shooting Championships coins were also the first South Korean coins to be minted in two different proof finishes (proof and frosted proof), although the 500 Won commemoratives, most of which were minted as business strikes, made up the majority of the total coins.

Officials at the Bank of Korea intentionally limited the total mintage of both coins to 1.1 million; far fewer than the five million total coins minted for the South Korea’s first domestically-made commemorative coin, the 30th Anniversary of Liberation 100 Won coin that was released in 1975. That experience had taught them that issuing millions of commemorative coins in a country where citizens were not familiar with the concept of a “commemorative coin” was not exactly a recipe for success. In an effort to avoid repeating the mistake, currency planners had hoped to enhance the commercial value of the Shooting Championships coins by striking some of them in silver, and by keeping their numbers to a relatively smaller overall mintage while also striking a small minority of both coins in different proof finishes. Other promotional efforts included purposely marketing the coins to foreign visitors attending the shooting event, to other tourists visiting South Korea, and to collectors.

Coin Melee
It is hard to believe that the sale of a commemorative coin in South Korea could have had people lining up all along the street and around the corner. The release of the 42nd World Shooting Championships 5,000 Won silver commemorative coin did just that.

At exactly 4 a.m. in the morning of the Bank of Korea’s 30th anniversary, Monday, June 12, 1978, numbers of people rushed to the Bank of Korea building from various corners of the surrounding neighborhood. They ran to queue up outside the front doors, released by the lifting of the citywide curfew (one that was enforced from midnight to 4 a.m. nightly in South Korean cities from September 1946 to January 1982). The crowd had flocked to purchase one of the six thousand 5,000 Won silver coins that were to be sold from the Bank building that day. The Bank’s remaining allotment of 12,000 silver coins, to be released the following day, were expected to attract an even larger crowd.

What would explain the public’s newfound interest in a commemorative coin when people seemed to have cared so little about them just a couple of years before? As South Korea placed severe restrictions on precious metals imports, the coin’s silver content probably had something to do with it, and that fact probably played into another phenomenon that was taking place at the time.

In 1978, many Koreans were benefitting from an improved economy, and some households were flush with cash from massive remittances sent home by Korean construction workers in Persian Gulf states, which had contracted Korean businesses to develop their infrastructure. Back in Korea, legal restrictions did not allow people many choices for investing any of this new money. Hard assets, such as land, were almost the only options. Indeed, the latter part of the 1970s was characterized by a real estate boom south of the Han River in Seoul in which farmers were becoming millionaires overnight by selling their once-inexpensive farmland to developers. The environment was ripe for the country to experience a “speculation craze.” Real estate was not the only area where this speculation fever existed. Precious metals were another. The coins became an instant magnet for investors when reports surfaced on June 12th about those lucky few who had purchased one of the new silver coins and then quickly sold it within minutes for a hefty profit.

So when the 4 a.m. curfew lifted the following morning, all hell broke loose at the Bank of Korea.

To read the complete article, see:
The 42nd World Shooting Championships Commemorative Coins (1978) (http://dokdo-research.com/42ndworldshooting.html)

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