Category: Revenue stamps

Until 1976 almost all municipalities in South Korea issued their own locally produced revenue stamps. These were used on all sorts of documents. The revenue stamps usually showed local monuments or other locally important items such as farm produce in agricultural areas.

In the heart of Gyeonggi-do, Korea, on a chilly November day in 1976, a unique event unfolded. Surplus revenue stamps, once a ubiquitous part of bureaucratic life, were set ablaze. But why were these stamps, known as 수입증지 in Korean, deemed surplus? And why were they destroyed rather than used up?

One of the largest collectors of revenue stamps worldwide was Joe Ross. It is unknown how many stamps from how many countries and organizations he owned, but he had a LOT of revenue stamps and documents with revenue stamps on them in his collection. Unfortunately he passed away a couple of years ago, but in […]

KP for August, 1969, p75-77 discussed the Korean Revenue Stamp Issues of 1946-48 and reproduced the U.S. Military Government Ordinances Number 110 (14 Sept. 1946) and Number 171 (11 March 1948) which authorized the issue and use of these two series of stamps. A recent opportunity to examine full panes of these stamps has provided […]

From the collection of Joe Ross, well-known amongst revenue stamp collectors as someone with one of the largest revenue stamp collections in the world and author of several revenue stamp catalogues, comes this revenue stamped document from the city of Masan (마산), now part of Changwon (창원시). Unlike with postal documents, revenue documents are usually […]

Recently seen on Ebay (and purchased by the well-known revenue stamp collector Joe Ross): two South Korean documents with tax stamps. In itself, both stamps and the type of document are not particularly special: both stamps were easily available at the counter in South Korea until at least 2014, and unlike many types of documents […]

(Part 3 of 3) Like most countries which at one time used revenue stamps, South Korea has a long history of using local revenue stamps. Until the 1970s these local revenue stamps were produced locally, each with a unique design per province or municipality. From 1976 onwards local revenue stamps were produced nationally (with standardized […]

(Part 2 of 3) Like most countries which at one time used revenue stamps, South Korea has a long history of using local revenue stamps. Until the 1970s these local revenue stamps were produced locally, each with a unique design per province or municipality. From 1976 onwards local revenue stamps were produced nationally (with standardized […]

Like most countries which at one time used revenue stamps, South Korea has a long history of using local revenue stamps. Until the 1970s these local revenue stamps were produced locally, each with a unique design per province or municipality. From 1976 onwards local revenue stamps were produced nationally (with standardized designs) by the national […]