Korea Stamp Society

It should not come as a surprise that a specialized stamp society such as the KSS has among its membership quite a few highly specialized members. However, it does sometimes feel as if the KSS has more of those specialized members than quite a few other stamp societies. It is of course purely anecdotal, but […]

Originated in Denmark, Christmas seals have become a universal symbol of the fight against tuberculosis. A story that includes an important chapter by Dr. Sherwood Hall, ‘19, and his wife, Dr. Marian Hall, the former Marian Bottomley, ’22. Going to Korea as medical missionaries in 1926, they established that country’s first tuberculosis sanatorium, for which […]

This year I was lucky enough to have bid on an auction and won this 1905 postal envelope of Missionary Horace Grant Underwood. The sender’s address is “FROM: H. G. UNDERWOOD,SEOUL, KOREA.”, receiver address is typed as “Tiffin Stamp Co, 160 N St. Tiffin Ohio, USA”. The envelope was franked with a 10 cent Eagle […]

The Stamp Museum of Pyongyang is housed in a specially built three-floor building next to the well-known Koryo Hotel in downtown Pyongyang. The front of the building is designed in the shape of a stamp. In front of the building stands a bronze statue of a dove holding a postcard while flying around the earth […]

(On 15 April an article was published on how the DPRK commemorates the birthday of Kim Il Sung. Here one of our members, Alexander Shaposhnikov, introduces a few other related stamp issues from his collection:) In addition to the article I am sending some photos of several rare imperforated stamps dedicated to the birthday of […]

October 2021 marked 70 years of the Korea Stamp Society! Really, it did. But did you know about it? Probably not, if only for the simple reason that until then nobody had advertised this fact. (We did in Korean Philately, have a look at the Q4 2021 edition!) Here are two other anniversaries related to […]

Sometime in 2021 Willem van der Bijl sent us these photos. Do you recognize these and know anything in particular about them? Such as period of usage etc. And do you perhaps own such items as well? I would love to see the TP labels you’ve got. Are they the same or are there more […]

A KSS member asks about North Korean revenue stamps: what do we know about these? “A small number of stamps, many duplicates. I do not specifically collect such stamps, but sometimes buy them. Are these stamps all North Korean? I read that there is a catalog of Korean (or North Korean) revenue stamps, but I […]

The South Korean government has been promoting the digitization of archives for several decades now. This is great for stamp collectors, as highly detailed information on South Korean postal and revenue stamps has come to light thanks to the efforts of South Korean archives. If you can read/write (type) Korean, a lot of information can […]

In the last few issues of KP and on the KSS website we have shown examples of album pages made and/or used by KSS members. Here we show the original KSS album pages, the pages as produced and for years marketed in Korean Philately by our long-time member David Phillips.

In early January 2021 the book “Buddhism on Stamps” was released by the Indian philatelist Mr. Lokeswara Rao (retired Principal Chief Conservator of Forests in Nagaland, India). He spared no efforts in creating his book, as not only does the book come with an introduction by the current Chief Postmaster General, the book also contains […]

Philatelic items directly related to Korea are relatively rare in (international) auctions. Of course, there are these “collections” with albums packed with North Korean stamps from the 1970s and 1980s or the usual South Korean flag sheets and such, but occasionally interesting items do show up. Here are a few examples from two different auction […]