The Bank of Japan said Friday it will speed up the distribution of new bank notes with advanced anticounterfeit features, driven by the discovery of a series of forged old bank notes over the past few weeks.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>As a result, all 1,000 yen, 5,000 yen and 10,000 yen bills in circulation are expected to be the new ones -- introduced Nov. 1 -- by spring 2006, earlier than the original November 2006 deadline, according to the BOJ.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Beginning Monday, the BOJ will distribute only new notes to commercial banks. Until Friday, old bills constituted 30 percent of the bank notes distributed daily to the banks.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The central bank Friday also requested that vending machine makers speed up the changes to their machines so they can accept the new bills.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>'The recent counterfeit cases have been the most serious ones in the past 20 years,' a senior BOJ official said.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Vending machines for cigarettes and soft drinks have been the slowest to switch over to the new notes, while all automated teller machines accept new bills.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Many fake notes have been photocopied, while new bills with cutting-edge anticounterfeit technology, including holograms and sophisticated bar codes, cannot be duplicated by photocopying, BOJ officials said.</PARAGRAPH> <SUBHEAD> Fakes spread to Seoul</SUBHEAD> <PARAGRAPH> SEOUL –

South Korean police said Friday they have launched an investigation after a visitor from Japan was found to have used several hundred counterfeit 10,000 yen bills at a casino in Seoul.

The man, an ethnic Korean who runs a real estate business in Japan, exchanged 420 bogus 10,000 yen bills at a hotel casino Friday, according to police.

The man was quoted as claiming he did not know the bills were fake.

The bills were part of 15.2 million yen in cash that the man, who entered South Korea on Tuesday for the purpose of gambling, exchanged at the hotel's casino.

They were discovered when someone at the money exchange desk, suspecting some of the bills were fake, requested a bank authentication.

It is not known whether the incident is connected to the recent spread of fake 10,000 yen bills in Japan. It was the largest number of fake 10,000 yen bills found in a single incident since the use of hundreds of fake bills came to light in Japan over the holidays.