[Courtesy of The PyeongChang Organizing Committee for the 2018 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games]
The organizing committee revealed commemorative coins in a ceremony attended by former figure skating champion Kim Yu-na, who is also the honorary ambassador for the 2018 games.
At home, ten designated financial institutions and Poongsan Hwadong, a distributor of the coins, will receive pre-orders from September 26 to October 7.
[Yonhap Photo]
In other countries, six overseas distributors will sell 30 percent of coins. The number of coins to be sold abroad may increase, depending on pre-order sales in South Korea.
The committee will issue coins twice. The first batch of 290,500 will be issued on November 18: 4,500 sets of gold coins priced at 30,000 won ($27), 15,000 sets of gold coins at 20,000 won, 200,000 sets of silver coins at 5,000 won and 71,000 sets of brass coins at 1,000 won.
Silver coins will have eight designs. All coins have Pyeongchang's Olympic emblem on their back side.
[Yonhap News Photo]
The committee said 31.1 gram gold coins depict a traditional winter sport called "Gorosoi ski" while 15.55 gram gold coins are inscribed with a ski jumping center in Pyeongchang. Silver coins have engravings of eight winter sports disciplines such as ski jumping and bobsleigh. Brass coins show athletes.
Organisers predicted the 17-day Pyeongchang Games starting on February 9 will would attract two million visitors as well as 6,300 athletes and officials from more than 100 countries.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
