A few series of North Korean revenue stamps from the 1940s and 1950s are known to collectors. These series have been described in various sources (including partially on the KSS website), but the main issue remains: almost nothing is known about them. What were these stamps used for? Were they affixed to documents or used in some other way? How long were they in circulation? Since North Korea has never opened its archives, no official records are available. In fact, most of these stamps are only known in mint condition—no genuinely used (cancelled) examples have ever been seen. And that’s peculiar, considering that revenue stamps are meant to be used.
There is, however, one notable exception: revenue stamps that were used as “supplementary franking” on postal items sent during the 1950s by Eastern Europeans working in North Korea. These revenue stamps added no actual postal value (in fact, the items already bore sufficient postage), but they do serve one important purpose: they prove beyond a doubt that these revenue stamps were indeed available in North Korea at that time.
