In the 1960s and for several decades afterwards David Phillips often wrote for Korean Philately magazine as well as being for some time the publisher of KP. He was also a producer of many philatelic publications including some of the best philatelic publications on Korea. This was at a time when next to nothing was available on the subject of Korea and philately in the English language.
In 2019 when I “pushed” David to write about those times and how publications were created he started to look for things in boxes in his house. One day he emailed me about negatives he had found, which he sent to me. After I had created photos from these negatives and showed scans of them he emailed me this:
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Just two notes:
1) Diplomatic mail US single-line hs: since the 1960s, some more covers have been sold by auction (see KSS auction catalog archive), but they are still very scarce, less than ten recorded I guess.
2) Pointing to the 1895/96 Poon denomination issue: “The stamps were perforated in Japan and several perf combinations are known, some in these photos. Thanks again.” – There is no proof of the assumption that they were perforated in Japan. In his book “The Facts of Korean Classic Stamps” Inje University Press (Busan) 1998, Kim Jae-Sung refers to official sources re. the importation of a perforation device from Germany around the time and discusses the reason for that acquisition. He suggests that the perforation was done in Korea, supported by several interesting perforation errors with the Poon issues (double perfs., imperf. in center, grossly OC) etc. which speaks convincinlgy for the missing experience with the new apparatus. The Japanese Govt. Printing office stamp series of the time (1883/92 typographed Kobans) never show such errors. That speaks for long-time experience on the one hand, and quality control (trashing such mishaps) on the other hand. Kim sums up that this makes the “perforated in Japan” assumption very unlikely.