The Bank of Korea: "Banknotes Destroyed Last Year Equal to 114 5-ton Trucks"

Bank of Korea '2020 Damaged Currency Disposal and Exchange Performance'

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Eun-byeol] Last year, the amount of damaged currency discarded by the Bank of Korea reached the highest level since 2009.

According to the '2020 Mid-Year Damaged Currency Disposal and Exchange Performance' announced by the Bank of Korea on the 3rd, the damaged currency judged and discarded by the Bank of Korea last year totaled 642.6 million notes, amounting to 4.7644 trillion KRW in value.

This is an increase of 2.2 million notes (0.3%) compared to the 640.4 million notes (approximately 4.354 trillion KRW) of damaged currency in 2019.

Damaged currency refers to currency that has been returned to the Bank of Korea through financial institutions and other channels, judged as damaged through the currency sorting process, and then discarded. The total includes banknotes (notes) and coins (pieces), with the unit unified as 'notes' for convenience.

Looking at the discarded damaged currency, banknotes centered on the 10,000 KRW note accounted for 608.5 million notes (67.0%) discarded. The discarded volume is equivalent to 114 trucks of 5-ton capacity, and if laid out end to end, the total length would be 87,967 km, which is about 106 round trips on the Gyeongbu Expressway.

A Bank of Korea official explained, "In particular, the circulation life of the 10,000 KRW notes issued between 2007 and 2008 has expired, and to prevent the spread of COVID-19, damaged currency has been actively discarded, resulting in 407.6 million notes discarded, a 23.9% increase compared to the previous year (329 million notes)."

Coins discarded totaled 34.1 million pieces (about 3 billion KRW), mainly 10 KRW coins (43.2%) and 100 KRW coins (42.4%).

Last year, 47.2 million damaged currency notes were exchanged through the Bank of Korea's currency exchange counters, amounting to 10.69 billion KRW. This is an increase of about 15.4 million notes (3.3 billion KRW) compared to the previous year (31.8 million notes, 7.4 billion KRW).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.