Postal stationery used in Northern Korea (I): Japanese colonial era 1944-1945

Old Korea Postcards

Preface: This series of articles derive from discussions among several KSS member collectors. Some of them are interested in collecting Korean (and Japanese) philatelic items but feel confused in distinguishing different surcharges of early Korean postal stationeries since they cannot read Hanja and Hangul.

Section 1 Japanese colonial era: 1944-1945

Background: Korea became Japanese colonial territory since 1910 and Japanese postal system was applied in Korean peninsula. The statue of Kusunoki Masashige (Japanese Kanji: 楠木正成), who was a samurai in 14th century Japanese history, was use as the design of imprinted stamp on Japanese postcard since 1930. Two types of postcards were issued, the first type was issued in 1930 with face value 1.5 sen; and the second type was issued in Aug 01, 1937, face value starting from 2 sen. This second type was also called “new Nanko” postcard to differentiate with old type. (Nanko was the respected calling of this samurai in Japanese pronunciation).

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4 thoughts on “Postal stationery used in Northern Korea (I): Japanese colonial era 1944-1945

  1. That’s very useful information! Especially the fact that you included the hanja helps a lot. Some Korea collectors can read hangul (like me), but almost none of the (Western) Korea collectors can read the Chinese characters. So explaining what is actually written helps a lot in understanding these cards.

    1. Dear Anthony, I didn’t possess the real card of Fig. 12, I took this image from internet and I wish to show the different ways of adding a new value, can either affix a stamp (Fig. 11) or use a chop (Fig. 12) or combination (Fig. 13). I double checked the image in my record and I think it was dated on S20. 8. 2, very late usage, but this matched the 5s postage at that period. If this card was dated in S19, postage then should be 3s. And the additional surcharge became doubtful.

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