The South Korean Stamp Scene (Part 7)

What follows is an update on my article of 1996 about the investment potential of South Korean stamps. In 1972 (when stamps were touted as investments) Linn’s Weekly Stamp News and others started “Investment Suggestions” which is now called the “Tip of the Week”. In about 1980 Linn’s began a “Trends of Stamp Values” which […]

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APS Stamp Chat with KSS’s Professor James Grayson ‘North and South Korea: The First Issues after the Second World War’

Professor James H. Grayson, a member of the KSS since 2000, was invited to speak on the American Philatelic Society’s ‘Stamp Chat’ internet discussion group.  His subject was ‘North and South Korea: The first issues after the Second World’.  He uses a semiotic approach to understanding the designs of stamps to discover the meanings which […]

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KPC3465-3468: Philately Week

(News from 우정사업본부 / KoreaPost) On 20 November 2020 KoreaPost issued a series of stamps commemorating philatelic week in Korea. This is a yearly returning stamp series, which in different forms (for instance as “postal week”) has been around since the 1960s. The four stamps have all sorts of themes. KSC3465 is “when spring comes […]

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North Korea: from Liberation to War (1945-1950)

Japanese control of Korea ended with the surrender on 15 August 1945 of the Imperial armed forces. Decisions made at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 were implemented after the surrender. The primary actions taken were the division of the Korean peninsula arbitrarily at the 38th Parallel, with the northern zone to be occupied by […]

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KSC5299: Let us advance vigorously towards the Eighth Party Congress by making the flames of the 80-day campaign flare up!

(News from 조선우표사 / Korea Stamp Corporation) On 17 November 2020 the Korea Stamp Corporation issued a stamp commemorating the 19th meeting of the Political Bureau. The KSC stated: “The 19th meeting of the Political Bureau of the Seventh Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea made a crucial decision to wage an 80-day […]

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Custodian Force, India in Korea 1953-1954

This cover illustrates the use of stamps overprinted for the Custodian Force, India (CFI). This was a deployment of Indian forces, including the 60th Parachute Field Ambulance unit (which had been in Korea from November 1950) to oversee the repatriation of POWs after the armistice. The CFI was in Korea from late September 1953 until […]

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Reader’s Question: is this 1948 North Korean card real or not…?

Is this card and the cancellations on it real or fake? I’m not sure if I’m qualified enough to certify this card, but as a serious DPRK collector I think this card has a 95-99% possibility to be fake. In fact, in my personal opinion, this card is totally fake: the card itself is fake, […]

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Special edition of Korean Philately on Christmas Seals 1932-1952 proposed

Korea Stamp Society’s (KSS) current Publisher/Webmaster, Ivo Spanjersberg, and I are working on issuing a special edition of the Korean Philately (KP). Originally we believed we would prepare a book or ”monogram” that would just cover Dr. Sherwood Hall’s Tuberculosis/Christmas and New Year’s seal program that occurred during the period of 1932-1940.

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