The 1940 Korean Christmas and New Year Seal: Last Year of Dr. Hall’s Seals in Korea

From a collector’s standpoint, the 1940 issued seal is very simple. For the officially issued 1940 seal there is only one design, one type of booklet with 5 panes of 10 (5 x 2), one type of sheet of 25 (5 x 5) and two postcards designs. As with the 1939 issues, the postcards are […]

Continue Reading

Reader’s Question: Pre-stamp mail between Korea and USA?

(Reader’s question/Q&A) I am student and collector of Pre-stamp postal history between USA and Asia. While I have found fair bit of literature on Pre-1860 postal history between USA and China and Japan, I have not been able to find any such information on mail between Korea and USA. I understand US churches including Baptist […]

Continue Reading

Reader’s Question: Too early day of issue of DPRK stamps?

(Reader’s question/Q&A) While browsing Ebay I recently ran into a listing which I first thought had read incorrectly. It was the “The 80th Anniversary of the Victorious Battles in the Musan Area” set of stamps, with a date of publication of 22 May 2019. However, despite these stamps’ future day of issue here they were, available […]

Continue Reading

KSC5199A: Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s Official Goodwill Visit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

(News from 조선우표사 / Korea Stamp Corporation) The Korea Stamp Corporation has published a 30 won stamp on the occasion of “Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s Official Goodwill Visit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

Continue Reading

2018 Christmas Seals (stamps and related products)

With all the recent publications on the 1930s/1940s Christmas seals on the KSS website by Robert Finder one might forget that these Christmas seals are not only interesting from a historical point of view. They are actually still around, being published every year! However, most publicity is available only to a Korean speaking audience. To […]

Continue Reading

KPC3367: Centennial Anniversary of Korea Provisional Government

(News from 우정사업본부 / KoreaPost) On 11 April 2019 KoreaPost released a stamp commemorating the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Provisional Government. The event commemorated with this stamp’s release is directly related to another event of 100 years ago, the March First Movement of 1919, also commemorated by a recent stamp release.

Continue Reading

Korean Railroad Commemorative Ticket Traffic Card Catalogue

Question: what do railway tickets and stamps have in common? Answer: not much, unless they come in stationary made exclusively for the tickets. Which is what is shown, amongst all the tickets of course, in the “Korean Railroad Commemorative Ticket Traffic Card Catalogue”, published on March 26 2013. 

Continue Reading

Reader’s Question: What does Japanese era card say?

(Reader’s question/Q&A) Recently I acquired a Japanese postcard displaying a map of Korea divided into sections (agriculture, communication, rail, and shipping). Since I can’t read Japanese, is there a way to translate the writing. The card was sent to Shanghai and has a pictorial red cancel with Shanghai receiving post mark.

Continue Reading

Download (KSS Members Only): Korean Stamp Catalog (Luther Dilley, 1961)

One of the most detailed catalogs for Korean stamps (not including the Korean Empire), was published for the first time in September, 1959 by Commander L.L. Dilley , USN (Ret.). Commander Dilley, seen here in a photo from World War II, was in the Cryptanalysis Section of Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC) based in Hawaii, […]

Continue Reading

The “Back Stories” of Unissued Stamps of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

The greatest difficultly in studying DPRK stamps is that reliable references are very limited in number, and the information available might be incomplete or even incorrect. Some stamps are without images in catalogues, some are unissued; and once in a while, collectors may surprisingly find something they have never seen or known before. However, it […]

Continue Reading