The 1937 Korean Christmas and New Year seal, like the 1936 seal, is not very complicated from a collecting standpoint. There are the single seal, booklets, sheets of 25, and postcards. The design of the seal show two boys spinning tops, as a woman with a baby watches them play. The building pictured in the background is the Pyongyang River Gate, in what is now North Korea. See Figure 1. This seal was designed by Kim Ki-chang, a famous artist in Korea whose artwork is still sought after today. He became deaf when he was four years old from typhoid fever.
Single Seals, Booklet and Sheets
The 1937 seal was again printed at the YMCA Printing Department in Seoul, using the lithography printing process. It was printed on un-watermarked, gummed, laid paper, with perforation 11. It was printed in sheets of 25 (5 x 5). It was issued on November 11, 1937.
Thank you Bob for this article. Do you know if there are any postage stamps, postal stationery etc is issued with Kim Ki-chang on it or his works? This would fit in my thematic exhibit about the blind and deaf, but I cannot use Christmas seals in there 😉
Hi Alex, welcome to you as a new member! I no not know of any, but I will ask Ivo Spanjersberg, the KSS to do a search in Korean and he may find something in the Korean literature. Bob
I did a search using his Korean name (김기창) plus the Korean term for stamps (우표) and discovered that his paintings have been shown on both North (2017) and South (2011) Korean stamps.
For an example of the North Korean stamps see this link: http://www.hankookilbo.com/News/Read/201712132285464074
And here are the South Korean stamps:
http://www.fairn.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=32161
Direct links to the official listing of these stamps:
ROK stamp:
https://stamp.epost.go.kr/sp2/sg/spsg0102.jsp?tbsmh15seqnum=2912&tbsmh01seqnum=1454&page_num=1&mainThemeCode=&stampCode=&yearCode=&strKeyword=
DPRK stamps
http://naenara.com.kp/main/index/en/stamp/stampviewer.pg.php?index=75&kind=Sp&date=2017
http://naenara.com.kp/main/index/en/stamp/stampviewer.pg.php?index=76&kind=Sp&date=2017
http://naenara.com.kp/main/index/en/stamp/stampviewer.pg.php?index=77&kind=Sp&date=2017
http://naenara.com.kp/main/index/en/stamp/stampviewer.pg.php?index=78&kind=Sp&date=2017
And the FDC for the DPRK stamps:
http://naenara.com.kp/main/index/en/stamp/stampviewer.pg.php?index=64&kind=Fp
Wow, thanks Ivo, looks quite a few of his paintings are on North and South Korean stamps. Bob
I put the Korean names in a google search and there a some photos of him painting and looks like he did a lot of horses. Also, here is the his painting that was used for the Christmas Seal design. Wish I had this when I wrote the article. http://www.sunjooschool.com/?mid=class_published_Painting&page=6&document_srl=5192&ckattempt=1
Bob
Whoops, I made a mistake that is painting of the 1935 seal by Nul Twi-ki.
Thank you Ivo and Bob. This is great help for developing my thematic exhibit.
Hi Robert, once you learn how to search the Korean language part of the internet you will find a LOT of information never published before in English. Simply use “크리스마스 씰” (= “Christmas seal” in Korean) in Google image search, see what comes up…
The other trick is to use Google Translate, create an English sentence, have Google translate it into Korean, and then copy-paste the Korean into Google search (or any other search engine of course). The translations into Korean are still a bit sloppy, but they are getting better.
Once the new version of the Korean – English philatelic glossary is online (Stanley Kim and I, with the help of James Grayson, are working on it) this becomes even easier. Just copy-paste the Korean term you are looking for and search for it.
Thanks Ivo. Bob