Won sign (₩)
The won sign (₩) stands for the won, the currency of South Korea (and, as a separate currency, of North Korea). It is a W crossed by one or two horizontal lines.
Easily confused with
How to read it
Unicode encodes it as WON SIGN (U+20A9), for Korea, and notes that the glyph may have one or two crossbars, but the most common form in Korea has only one. The ISO 4217 list has two wons: the won of the Republic of Korea, KRW, and the North Korean won, KPW (currency codes). Unicode also lists the Chinese characters 元 and 圓 among those used for the won, as for the yuan and the yen.
Also searched as: ₩, korean won symbol, krw symbol, won sign, won sign symbol, won symbol.
These describe what each sign means and which currency uses it. They are not financial advice, and they give no prices or exchange rates.
A backslash that shows as ₩
On a computer set to Korean, the backslash can appear as ₩. Michael Kaplan of Microsoft explained in 2005 that on the Korean code page 949 the byte 0x5C, a backslash elsewhere, is the won sign, and that Korean fonts show the currency sign in place of the backslash when the system locale is Korean. It still works as a backslash in file paths. Japanese systems do the same with the yen sign.
Read next
- Next in Currency symbolsPhilippine peso sign (₱)The Philippine peso sign (₱) stands for the peso of the Philippines. Other peso currencies, such as the Mexican peso, are written with the dollar sign ($).
- The same shape in Smoke and CO alarm soundsLow-frequency 520 Hz alarm (sleeping rooms)A fire alarm in a sleeping room that sounds a low buzz in place of a high-pitched beep. It is the three-beep fire alarm rhythm at 520 Hz, which NFPA 72 requires of alarms provided to wake people in sleeping areas.
More currency symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with letters and numbers or lines.
Sources
- Currency Symbols: Range 20A0–20CF (code chart), The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0, Unicode Consortium, 20A9
- Chapter 22, Symbols: 22.1 Currency Symbols, The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0, Core Specification, Unicode Consortium, 22.1 Currency Symbols (Table 22-1)
- ISO 4217 currency code list (List One), Current currency and funds code list, SIX Financial Information (ISO 4217 Maintenance Agency), Korea
- [Weekender] Korean currency evolves over millennium, The Korea Herald, 28 August 2015 (photographs from the Bank of Korea), The Korea Herald, Article text and captions
- When is a backslash not a backslash?, Michael S. Kaplan, Sorting It All Out (Microsoft Developer Network blog), 17 September 2005; archived copy, Microsoft (blogs.msdn.com), archive by Jan Kučera, Post text
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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