One of our members, Darrin Lettinga, received a message from Kenneth James Bryson from the ISJP, which read: “I have had an inquiry from a JP (Japanese Philately) reader about a marking on a cover that was sent within the US expeditionary force in Siberia in 1919. It has some Hangul on it, and I think the four 팔경 trigrams around the edge. Is there anyone in Korean philately who could help identify this mark?” Included with the question was an image of the cover.
A very interesting question, with a very special link to KSS history. This is a privately made oval name chop. The text, which is indeed Korean (hangul) reads 골긴스 or 콜긴스. That’s Calkins written in hangul. The chop was therefore made by Forest W. Calkins, a very long-time member of the KSS, who was for four decades (1952-1991!) the treasurer of the KSS. Although I do no know much about his time in Korea, I do know that he was in the US Army before/during the the Korean War, which meant he had the opportunity to collect a lot of Korea related philatelic items during that time.
Here is one such example, a Japanese era postal card. That card is not particularly special, but notice the chop on the card. I have no idea why Calkins put his chop on philatelic items, but it seems he did this quite often. Why he did this on the Siberia cover in particular I wouldn’t know and there is nobody alive today who could answer that question, but I am very sure he wasn’t in Siberia in 1919 (I think he wasn’t even born yet at that time!) to warrant his private chop to be put on that cover. But whatever the reason for him doing this, it definitely is Calkin’s chop.
