North Korea Guide
Money
The official currency of the DPRK is the North Korean won, but you're unlikely to have too much contact with it as foreigners aren't allowed to use local money; for what it's worth, the exchange rates at the time of writing were W290 to £1, W145 to US$1, W125 to A$1 and W200 to €1. There was a time when the won was pegged at 2.16 to the dollar, a fiscally ridiculous nod to Kim Jong-il's birthday on February 16, but this policy was abandoned in 2001.
Note that it's illegal to export North Korean currency out of the country – if you do manage to get hold of some, keep your cache of cash well hidden when leaving. The easiest approach is to ask at your hotel reception; usually they won't mind if you say that you're collecting money from around the world. The notes that they dole out are suspiciously clean, but while they make for good souvenirs they're nothing like the dirty, tattered, falling-to-bits rags that ordinary North Koreans use; to get your hands on one of these, you'll have to use a bit of initiative. One good source are the tiny ice-cream stands that you'll see around Pyongyang in warmer months – you don't have any local money, the ice-cream women will only have local change and will be glad for foreign currency, so everyone's a winner. As long as your guide doesn't notice, you should be able to walk away with a fistful of genuine notes.