Supporting Philatelists Since 1952
News about Korean philately in general.
Throughout the history seals have adorned letters and manuscripts. Whether wax or paper, this simple practical device has been utilised as a messenger in its own right, demonstrating power and status, highlighting a worthy cause or sending a seasonal greeting (see the famous TB Christmas seals). The seal and its cinderella cousin have a justified […]
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Several interesting items are shown in current auctions run by Soler y Llach and Gärtner. These items are a cover (Soler y Llach) and postcards (Gärtner) with stamps from the classical period of Korean philatelic history, in this case covers sent between 1897 and 1904.
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We are always on the look out for interesting Korean philatelic materials showing up in auctions. One noticeable item showing up in a Rapp auction (“Rapp Auktion Nr. 39 und Nr. 40 von 23. bis 28. November 2020“) is item nr. 2826. This item is listed in both German and English. The Korean items shown […]
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The Dutch mail auction ‘Sheraton & Peel’ by René Hillesum Filatelie (since 1991) offers a selection of Dutch (and Colonies) and international philatelic materials. The upcoming auction of December 23 is offering several postal history items of interest to Korea collectors.
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Professor James H. Grayson, a member of the KSS since 2000, was invited to speak on the American Philatelic Society’s ‘Stamp Chat’ internet discussion group. His subject was ‘North and South Korea: The first issues after the Second World’. He uses a semiotic approach to understanding the designs of stamps to discover the meanings which […]
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The newly issued 2021 Scott catalog, Vol 4A , has a Korean stamp (Scott804/KPSC639; issued December 1, 1971) for the New Year of 1972 on the cover. The year 1972 was the Year of the (Water) Rat, and this stamp shows two rats flying a kite. However, in the Korean language the word for mouse […]
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In 1984 I established a standing order account with the Korean Philatelic Center (KPC) for all new commemorative and definitive stamp issues including souvenir sheets. This account was initiated by writing a personal check in $US to the KPC with a payee as instructed. I am not fluent in Korean so the process used was […]
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Because of the corona virus doing the rounds the Korean Stamp Museum is, like so many other such institutes, closed at the moment. However, just a few days ago KoreaPost issued a link on its website to a complete virtual tour of the Korean Stamp Museum. When clicked one starts just outside the museum, underground, […]
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The official (state) postal organization of North Korea, the Korea Stamp Corporation, has published the themes and dates for the 2020 stamp releases of the DPRK. The January and February releases on the list are already known of course, but many other themes were shown for the first time with the release of the list.
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On 28 February 2020 KoreaPost released the 2019 Yearbook. This Yearbook contains all the official commemorative and regular stamps released by KoreaPost during 2019, making for a total of 82 commemorative and 3 regular stamps. All descriptions are in both Korean and English.
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The current crisis with the corona virus has created the need for the Korean government to make as many Koreans as possible aware of the risk. Currently a series of campaigns raising awareness of how to avoid getting sick is on-going. KoreaPost has joined in by creating this cartoon, a “webtoon”, reminding people to help […]
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(News from 우정사업본부 / KoreaPost) KoreaPost released the 2020 publication schedule, showing all planned new stamp issues for the whole year. Several anniversaries are on the list and so are both the Korean culture and history related issues as well as Korean independence related stamps.
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(News from 우정사업본부 / KoreaPost) KoreaPost has released promotional materials for the recent stamp issue titled “Science and Technology that Lead Korea” (KPC3427-3434). These materials were published on both the KoreaPost Facebook page as well as the Kstamp blog. The materials are available in Korean only.
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One way of acquiring new items for a stamp collection is by buying them on online auction websites. There are many great items available online, but also many fakes. But what is real and what isn’t? Also, even if real, not everything is as important or interesting as it might be described by the seller […]
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PostNews, one of the websites maintained in the KoreaPost family of postal websites, released images of the series of New Year greetings cards for 2020. The (Chinese/Korean) year 2020, starting on January 25 2020, is the Year of the (Metal) Rat. Several of the cards therefore show a rat/mouse, but other images are available.
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The Korean National Tuberculosis Association interviewed the illustrator who created this year’s Christmas seals, Ahn Sol (안솔). The seals show the Haenyeo (해녀) of Jeju island, the women who dive for seafood around the coast of the island. Ahn Sol created the artwork for the seals while staying for a couple of months on the […]
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The new Christmas seals for Christmas 2019 have been released by the Korea National Tuberculosis Association. The stamps feature Jeju island and the famous local diving women, the “haenyeo”. The sheet is for sale online through the KNTA website and costs 3.000 won (approx. 2,50 dollars / 2,30 EUR).
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KoreaPost is calling upon Koreans to remember all things related to the “independence for Korea” movement. Because many of the people and symbols related to the struggle for independence have been featured on stamps KoreaPost can show a lot of examples from the past. It’s all in Korean, but even without any knowledge of Korean […]
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In a recent blog post the 대한결핵협회 / Korean National Tuberculosis Association (KNTA) shows Sherwood Hall’s turtle ship drawing, which was a subject proposed for his first Christmas seals. In the end this idea was not used and another seal was released. Interestingly this version of the drawing is slightly different from the one in […]
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I had just written about the very strong market for the rare Korean Christmas and TB seal on August 4, 2019 with two 1953 sheets selling for around $2000 each on eBay. Now a pair of the very rare unissued Dr. Hall 1940 seal has just sold for US$2600. One of the pair was damaged […]
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