SEOUL: A new high-quality counterfeit $100 bill has been found in South Korea, bank officials said yesterday, prompting suggestions the sanctions-hit North might have resumed forging "supernotes". A team of forgery specialists at KEB Hana Bank have confirmed that a $100 note found at a Seoul branch in November was a fake which was almost impossible to distinguish from real banknotes, they said. "It was the first of a new kind of supernote ever found in the world," Yi Ho-Joong, head of the KEB Hana Bank's anti-counterfeit centre said. Previous "supernotes" were dated either 2001 or 2003 but the new forgery is dated 2006.

The same methods including raised and dented printing and no-smudge inks that are normally used for real banknotes have been applied to the newly found supernote, he said. "You need facilities worth some $100 million to produce counterfeit bills of this quality and no crime rings would invest that much to make fake dollars," he said.