Korea Stamp Society

From the first printed stamps in South Korea in 1946 after the WWII, up to around 1953, many of those issues can be found printed as imperforated stamps, double printed stamps and stamps printed on both sides. The stamps were issued by the US Military from 1946-1948. On August 15, 1948, the South Korean government […]

(A recent listing of a postcard on Ebay led to a series of emails amongst active KSS members. James Grayson, who lived for several decades in Korea and knows a lot about the history of churches in Korea, created this text, together with Florian Eichhorn, in answer to the questions raised.) This post card forms […]

In 1919 the Japanese introduced “Postage Fee Paid” forms. These forms were used to pay for various kinds of mail matter in bulk. The official Japanese postal term was 郵便料金受領証原符 = Postage fee reception original form and is imprinted on top. The actual mail items received a circular bisected handstamp in characters “(post office name)/postage […]

The topic of the Plum Blossom Essay was last seen on the Korea Stamp Society webpage back on August 7, 2019 in an article by Gary McLean.

I started collecting the Postal Stationery of the DPRK as I had one or two clients who were buying North Korean postal history which was all but unobtainable in Western Europe in the 1980’s. After leaving Stanley Gibbons in 1992 to start ‘Carmichael & Todd’, I joined the KSC. I attended, with a stand, the […]

I have been collecting stamps from North Korea for about 30 years and I can say that the philately of this country has many secrets and mysteries. The main catalogs (Scott, Michel, and Stanley Gibbons (SG)) do not provide complete and reliable information. The catalog printed in the DPRK gives distorted price information. Yes, this […]

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) issued its first set of stamps on September 19, 1948 commemorating the establishment of the DPRK on September 9, 1948, Scott 14-15. The Scott numbers for North Korea 1 -13 are for used for the Soviet occupation era. Since those stamps were issued, North Korea has issued stamps […]

Some of the types of souvenir sheets of North Korea issued in 1976 are confusing to me when trying to identify them. There may have already been articles on this topic that I have not seen, but I hope that some of our Korea Stamp Society members can answer some of my questions. One example […]

The academic publishers Routledge has just published a new book edited by Prof. Stanley D. Brunn of the University of Kentucky on the subject of stamps as a source for documentary research on political trends, changes and transitions. Stanley Brunn, along with Jack Child and David Scott, has been among the leading Anglophone scholars to […]

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 […]

Depending on the laws of a specific land which stamps to publish is decided upon in all sorts of ways. In some countries the government (usually through a ministry) decides what which stamps to issue, in other countries it is the postal authority or the postal services themselves. In Germany for instance the Ministry of […]

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 […]