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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;mlov43, post: 1974380, member: 16729&quot;]Yes, this is Admiral Yi Soon-shin and his <i>Geobuk seon</i> or &quot;Turtle Boat.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>Admiral Yi (or Lee) is not often touted by the DPRK as a big historical hero, not as much as in South Korea.&nbsp; He&#039;s an historically-acceptable figure in the North (obviously, there&#039;s his commemorative coin!), but only a MINOR one.&nbsp; I suspect the reason is because the North&#039;s arch-nemesis, President Park (1961-1979) of South Korea pushed the image and legend of Admiral Yi in a major &quot;monuments building&quot; campaign (this effort also resulted in South Korea&#039;s 100 Won coin (1970) featuring the Admiral, and the 5 Won coin (1966) with the turtle ship). </p><p><br /></p><p>Admiral Yi and the turtle boat were much-celebrated as anti-Japanese symbols during the Park regime, since Park needed anti-Japanese messaging to offset his cozying up to Japan during his economic push (After they normalized relations with Japan in 1965, the South Koreans became the beneficiaries of over $1.4 billionUSD in Japanese grants, loans, and commercial credits by 1985).&nbsp; Admiral Yi helped deflect the Korean public&#039;s attention away from the fact that much of the South&#039;s economic rise was financed by Japan, even though this was kept as hush-hush as possible, too.&nbsp; ..and it helped Park&#039;s own anti-Japanese cred.&nbsp; He needed it: The president was an officer in the Japanese Army during WW2(!)</p><p><br /></p><p>So, seeing the Admiral on a DPRK coin is interesting, as he is probably one of (maybe) TWO historical figures to which BOTH the North and the South can agree.</p><p><br /></p><p>You can get sufficient info about the turtle boat at Wikipedia: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_ship" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_ship" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_ship</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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