North Korea: KPW, tax & payment methods

Money

Currency and formatting

Watch out: KPW has no minor unit. Treating it like a two-decimal currency overcharges by 100×.

Tax

North Korea has no single national consumption tax that applies at a checkout. We report this as a null rather than inventing a rate.

Payments

Roughly ordered by real-world use — not by what a card processor would prefer you offer.

Card schemes that work domestically: koryo, narae. 3-D Secure is not standard; strong customer authentication is not legally mandated.

Locale

Phone

FAQs

What currency does North Korea use?

North Korea uses the North Korean Won (KPW), symbol KPW. It has no minor unit — amounts are whole numbers, so KPW 123,457 is a complete price.

How many decimal places does KPW have?

KPW has 0 decimal places. Charging with the wrong number of minor units is a 100× error, so this is worth getting right.

Is there sales tax in North Korea?

North Korea has no single national consumption-tax rate that applies to a checkout.

What payment methods are used in North Korea?

The methods that matter in North Korea, in rough order of use: cash, jonsong, samhung, manmulsang.

What is the dialling code for North Korea?

North Korea's country calling code is +850. Mobile numbers are formatted +850 19X XXX XXXX (10 digits after the country code).

API_

Everything on this page is one call away — plus live FX, fraud signals and the visitor's own detected country.

north-korea.sh

curl "https://api.localesense.com/v1/countries/KP" \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer ls_live_..."