Korean Relief Inc. and the Story of Father Aloysius Schwartz

Our past Chairman and Publisher of the Korea Stamp Society (KSS), Ivo Spanjersberg, has long urged that he and I write an article about the Korean Relief Inc. organization and its related Korean philatelic items. Various items of postal history, including postal stationery, aerogrammes, Christmas seals and labels, and other related merchandize, are frequently seen […]

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Is this a Cover from Dr. New-Ilhan, One of the Co-Founders of La Choy?

Recently when I was searching on the net for Japanese Occupation of Korea covers, I found a cover that was very interesting to me. I did a search for the sender’s name and discovered that this might be a cover with that contained a letter from New-Ilhan. His original name was Ilhyeong New.

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Missionary stamp collectors on 1964 KPS membership list

In an issue of the KSS Newsletter, there was a photocopy of part of the membership list of the Korea Philatelic Society. It is interesting to note that two non-Koreans are listed as members, both missionaries. One is KSS member Dr. Lyman Hale (1922 – 2019), a physician at Severance Hospital, Seoul and a member […]

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How Stalin and Mao disappeared from the map of Pyongyang

After the Second World War quite a few cities in Western democracies had a “Stalin Street”. At the time this was quite understandable: the Soviet Union had from 1941 been an important ally against Nazi Germany. However, these streets disappeared overnight when the Soviet army invaded Hungary in 1956. The Stalinlaan in Amsterdam for instance […]

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Korea’s economic development through postal history (Saemaul Undong Card, 1978)

Part of a series of 5 cards issued at 10 won each in 1978 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the (South) Korean state, this card (CPC4) shows an important development in South Korean society. During the 1960s and 1970s South Korea tried to develop its economy. No efforts were spared to create a stronger […]

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North – South: A unique cover (Backgrounds and Images)

(Note: this article is a follow-up to the article from Lloyd Heath republished in December 2019.) I am happy to be able to provide an illustration (Fig. 1), and some observations, of this extremely special item of post-war Korean postal history. The sender’s address on this cover (using the Northern Korean transliteration of place names) […]

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