From one of our readers we received the following question: “Good day, When I travel to Seoul, I will bring with me some mint South Korean stamps on specially printed envelopes. Which post office in Seoul do you recommend so that I can get a courtesy cancellation on these stamps? (That means I will take the envelopes back with me, they will not be sent). I would like to avoid the postal worker telling me that I have to send the letters by post.
A post office used to service philatelists would be fine. Kind regards from Vienna”
We asked the KPF’s liaison officer, Jin Hur, if he knew the answer to this question. He sent us the following reply:
“Some post offices nationwide have special (pictorial) cancellations, while others do not. People who would like to obtain these cancellations can visit the larger post offices, where they can easily get them. This means they do not have to send the envelopes with the cancellations through the mail. They can request that the post office provide these cancellations on the envelopes at no charge.
However, we do not have a complete list of post offices that use special cancellations in English. If they are staying only in Seoul, we recommend visiting the Gwanghwamun Post Office or the Seoul Central Post Office.”
Coincidentally this month’ Woopyo magazine, the magazine of the KPF, shows examples of such pictorial cancellations. In this particular case pictorial cancellations from Jeju post offices are shown. Here is one of the pages from Woopyo:
This is the type of cancellation you could collect if you go to a KoreaPost post office. If anyone has recent examples of such (pictorial) cancellations on cover we would love to hear from you!
