New Web Article On Korean Coins

This is a pretty full on research and kudos to you Mark as usual!

Just wondered if there is an error in this - in the production chart where you have the weight of the 100, 50 and 10 hwan, they are noted as 104, 57 and 38 grams respectively.

Also the melt down rate for the 100 hwan coin seems to be quite staggering - at 315 metric tons. I believe the weight of the 100 hwan coin is at 6.74g. Total mintage of 100 hwan coin is 50 million. So in total, that would be 337 metric tons. So the survival rate after the meltdown for the 100 hwan coin is just a mere 3.26 million! (assuming if the melted down figures are accurate) To me, I found it difficult to find a decent 100 hwan coin. Fair enough, the mintage of 1970 100 won coin is a lot lower at 1.5 million and is tough to find in UNC condition.

And finally the hot topic of who EvH is - I still reckon it is a mint master in the US mint with a German / Dutch name - this way it would explain the small letter 'v' such as "von" or "van". If anyone has a reference with US mint sculptors or engravers, can you please kindly look it up?

For a random thought - I was thinking of Rhee's second wife - Franziska Donner. If that is pronounced in Hangul, it would be Ri Pu ran (from what I googled). So if an English speaker attempted to pronounce it (back in the days of Wade Giles), would it be EvH? Probably too far fetched...

gx: YES, I noticed that the grams figures never did jibe. That bothered me, but I never made the connection, and I looked at it again and again. Looking back NOW at the original US Mint production chart for foreign coins xcel file, I notice my error: I was looking at the figures for "grains" and not under the column for "grams" (duh). I guess I was getting punchy or something... No wonder the math never worked out when I tried to figure the weight of those 50 Hwan coin crates. Now it works: 12,000 X 6.73=80,760g and that in pounds is 97 lbs. With the weight of the box, that is reasonably 108 lbs.

And the melt-down rate figures: These seem accurate. Perhaps they didn't use the entire quantity and sold the rest? Selling the metal was an option that the SK govt was toying with at the time. The 315mt figure comes from Jo Byung-soo's book, Korean Commemorative Coins. Barring any other information on this, which probably doesn't exist unless someone can pry this information from KOMSCO, this is what I'll have to use.

And I don't see much of a problem in finding good-condition 100 Hwan coins, actually. I easily found two examples for my UNC/BU collection. Perhaps there's more over here in North America in decades-old 2X2s, which both of mine were.

Thanks for the correction!

Matteproof: PLEASE use the image from my site (with site link, if you can) and ask around that Korean forum. I have found that I cannot access Korean forums because I don't have a Korean National ID number (주민ë"±ë¥µì¦�) to become a member of Naver or the other blogs. Is there one that doesn't require this?