The 1951 provisional Korean stamps were issued with overprinted inflationary denominations of 100, 200, and 300 won on the basic stamps whose values range from 4 to 100 won. These overprinted stamps afford not only an exciting challenge to the casual collector, but also an excellent opportunity for specialization by the most exacting connoisseur. Recent interest in this provisional issue, reflected by fluctuating catalogue prices of individual stamps becoming more or less available, has resulted in the gradual realization by many Korean stamps collectors during the past ten years that differences in these overprints were not minor flyspeck varieties, but were separate printings.
The issue was produced under extreme wartime conditions from several different printing plates by two processes. Lithographed surcharges were printed until midsummer 1951 by the Pusan Sangmidang Offset Printing Co. Then, the remaining printing of these surcharges was moved to the Tongyang Chungpan Printing Co. These stamps were printed by the typographic method. Today, these surcharge issues are one of the few sources of modern-day rarities – unintentionally produced inverted and doubled surcharges on stamps – that are still available to the collector of modest means.
This a great series of articles which I need to study in detail. They should be very useful to the South Korean collectors of issues from this era. Someday I hope to look through all the different ones I have and actually determine which varieties that I have in my collection.