Washington Post – North Korea revalues currency, destroying personal savings:
“I worked like a dog for two months for the winter, but the money became useless paper overnight,” a resident of Sinuiju, a city that borders China, was quoted as saying on the Web site of Good Friends, a South Korea-based aid organization with informants in the North.
In a long view of history every fiat currency has come to an end. In the short term you always need savings in fiat currency, but it’s a lousy way to store wealth in the long term. Even without something as dramatic as a currency event your fiat money is eroded every year by inflation. Inflation goes hand-in-hand with paper money that can be printed at will.