Won is the currency of both North and South Korea. Won is a cognate of the Chinese currency unit, yuan and the Japanese currency unit, yen, meaning "round object". The won is subdivided into 100 jeon (전; 錢; McCune-Reischauer: chŏn; Revised Romanization: jeon).
Yang is a former Korean currency. It is a cognate of the Chinese tael (pronounced "liǎng" in Chinese). The yang was subdivided into 100 fun (pronounced "pun" but spelt with an "f" on the coins). Fun (푼) is a cognate of the Chinese word fen (分 fēn), referring to 1/100 of a Chinese yuan in modern context.
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Due to interchanging Chinese influences, changing Romanization methods, and the use of both hanja (Sino-Korean characters) and hangul scripts, the etymology can be hard to understand. The table below summarizes the language used on the modern circulating and historical Korean currencies.
| Period | Subunit | Main unit | Super unit | Note | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | Hanja | Hangul | Ratio | English | Hanja | Hangul | English | Hanja | Hangul | Ratio | ||
| 1892-1902 | fun | 分 | 푼 | 1/100 | yang | 兩 | 냥 | hwan | 圜 | 환 | 5 | |
| 1902-1910 | chon | 錢 | 전 | 1/100 | won | 圓 | 원 | None | 1 won = 5 yang of the previous period | |||
| 1902-1945 | sen | 錢 | N/A | 1/100 | yen | 圓 | N/A | None | 1 yen = 1 won = 5 yang | |||
| Due to Colonial era, the English transliterations were based on Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters. | ||||||||||||
| North Korea 1945-present |
chon | 錢 | 전 | 1/100 | won | 圓 | 원 | None | 1 won = 1 yen in 1945 1 new won = 1 old won in 1959. Use of Hanja disappeared after 1959 |
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| South Korea 1945-1953 |
chon | 錢 | 전 | 1/100 | won | 圓 | 원 | None | 1 won = 1 yen | |||
| South Korea 1953-1962 |
chon | 錢 | 전 | 1/100 | hwan | 圜 | 환 | None | 1 hwan = 100 won of the previous perioud | |||
| South Korea 1962-present |
jeon | 錢 | 전 | 1/100 | won | 圓 | 원 | None | 1 won = 10 hwan of the previous period | |||
| Bold = what was actually printed on the notes/engraved on the coins | ||||||||||||
In the brief period when the yang was used, 1 hwan/won (圜 = 圓 in Chinese) = 5 yang (兩), while in the Chinese monetary system of that time, 1 yuan (圓) = 0.72 tael (兩).
The word jeon is also used in Korean to translate the word "cent," and in this context is associated with bul (불, 弗), meaning "dollar." (The hanja character resembles the symbol "$".) These two words are used by Koreans living in the Western hemisphere when referring to dollar currencies.
The won sign ("₩", a capital W with a horizontal stroke) is represented in Unicode at the code point 20A9 (8361 in decimal).
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