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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;mlov43, post: 2581753, member: 16729&quot;]In an interview from the 1990s, one of South Korea&#039;s main currency designers from the 1960s and 1970s said that coin production was wasteful and funds would be better spent elsewhere.&nbsp;&nbsp; Getting rid of coins, or doing an overall restructuring of the currency system in a reform (dropping &quot;two zeroes&quot;) is something that South Korea has been contemplating for some time.&nbsp;&nbsp; I wish that would happen instead of getting rid of the coins altogether...</p><p><br /></p><p>As a foreign visitor, and non-&quot;T-Money&quot; card user, I find that the most useful coins are the 500 Won and the 100 Won coins, since the lower-cost items are almost always priced to the nearest 100 Won (9 cents in USD), and have been for a while.&nbsp; The two smaller coins still in circulation, 50 and 10, are irritatingly given as change only in certain transactions, like fees to enter a tourist attraction, or for bus fares.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I cannot imagine Koreans getting rid of cash (notes) altogether.&nbsp; There&#039;d be no &quot;secure and secret&quot; way to, uh, &quot;grease the wheels&quot; as it were.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Speaking of which, the Bank of Korea counts used banknotes and coins that come back into the Bank&#039;s control, and calls the percentage that return as the &quot;collection rate&quot;:&nbsp; The “collection rate” for smaller denomination banknotes (1,000; 5,000 and 10,000 Won) is not bad, at over 90%, while the Bank is reclaiming less than 60% of the newer-introduced (2006) 50,000 Won notes.&nbsp; The reason for this is that the 50K notes are popular in the &quot;black economy&quot; of gambling and organized crime activity.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for coins, the Bank of Korea considers the little copper-coated aluminum 10 Won coin as a particular irritant with its low collection rate of 3.7% (in 2014).&nbsp; This means that when 100 of the coins are issued into the market, less than four are recovered by the Bank of Korea.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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