Missionary Correspondence from Kwangju, 1926

Old Korea

This cover is from M L Swinehart a missionary in Kwangju to an address in Virginia, USA dated to 1926.

The Cover

The cover is a simple envelope with a printed return address in the upper left-hand corner with a franked 2 sen stamp (Sakura 145) of the Japanese definitive series of 1914-1925 in the upper right-hand corner. The cancellation is very smudged, and the precise date and place of cancellation cannot be determined. The interesting point about the address – the name of the city and the nation – is that they are given according to Korean pronunciation and preference. The city’s name is given as Kwangju (光州) rather than in the Japanese reading of the characters as Kōshū. Officially, Japanese-ruled Korea was called ‘Chōsen’ and not ‘Korea’. The cover has been stamped with a square seal reading ‘Beikoku’ (美國, America) in Japanese.

The rest of this article is for KSS members only. Please login. Not a member yet? Join the KSS now, giving you access to ALL articles and downloads on the KSS website.
Tagged

1 thought on “Missionary Correspondence from Kwangju, 1926

  1. James, a very interesting article for “Korea Topic in Brief”. Thanks. I was once interested in missionaries to Korea and I do recall I came across “Topic in Brief” a few times. There was a 1929 publication of Korea Topic in Brief (1921~1929), which apparently covered the newsletters from Oct 1921 to Nov 1929, with 244 pages.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.