Korea Stamp Society

The 1939 Koran Christmas and New Year seal program is similar to 1938 as there are two different booklet sizes. There was just one design. There are regular sheets of 25 (5 x 5), sheets of 40 (4 x 10) that were used for the small booklets, and sheets of 9 plus 9 labels also […]

This is Part 5 of the BOOKLETS WITH COLOR BARS article. On 1/24/1994 the Ministry issued the first “Portable Booklet” to commemorate the 21st U.P.U. Congress (3rd issue). This issue started the color bars for a total of 15 issues through 3/27/1996. All of these were in the “Portable Booklet” format. For explanation see part […]

Sun Tzu was a Chinese general, military strategist, writer, and philosopher who lived in the Eastern Zhou period of ancient China. Sun Tzu is traditionally credited as the author of The Art of War, a widely influential work of military strategy that has affected both Western and East Asian philosophy and military thinking. Aside from […]

Stamps with different colors were used to indicate different denominations until multicolored stamps appeared along with the development of color printing techniques. The majority of modern stamps are still of a single color design. In the early days of printing stamps, inks were made up in batches as needed and the colors were inconsistent. In […]

It has been known for some time that the DPRK had numerous stamps designed that were numbered in the Korea Stamp Corporation’s DPRK Stamp Catalogue. Some of these items were illustrated as unissued stamps, but other “others,” until this past year, were not illustrated at all. Why they were not illustrated (though numbered) prior to […]

(Reader’s question/Q&A) KSS member Kimmo has a question regarding this stamp: “I have a North Korean stamp from 1976 (SG N 1555; Mi 1527) with a color shift (red 3 mm right and 1 mm up from the correct alignment). I would like to know if members are able to provide me additional information on […]

There are many ways of collecting and studying postage stamps – for their intrinsic collectable interest, for thematic interests, as a representative of the history of the postal service in different countries, and many other aspects. One approach which I follow is to examine the semiotics of the design of stamps. That is, what is […]

In 2000 the KSS published a monograph, the third in the series of KSS monographs, titled “The Postal History of the Korean War 1950-1953”. Written by Robert W. Collins, this monograph is no longer readily available. As a service to KSS members a scanned version of this document is available online. Some examples and texts […]