A Post Card from Korea: A Poignant Relic from Colonial Korea

(A recent listing of a postcard on Ebay led to a series of emails amongst active KSS members. James Grayson, who lived for several decades in Korea and knows a lot about the history of churches in Korea, created this text, together with Florian Eichhorn, in answer to the questions raised.) This post card forms […]

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Missionary Correspondence in Colonial Korea: McCune – Hunt Letters

The three envelopes described below are small but important pieces of information about three key Presbyterian missionary families in Korea – the McCunes, the Hunts, and the Blairs. All of these families were involved in education, and became embroiled in the politics of colonial Korea under the Japanese. In particular, they and other missionaries were […]

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Beautiful Korean Silk/Wood Christmas Card from the late 1920’s

Recently I was attracted to a “wood” Korean Christmas Card mailed from Korea to Florida, USA in the late 1920’s. I had never seen one like this before and bought it. When I received it, I was pleasantly surprised how beautiful it was, when I actually saw the card itself. The wooden card has a […]

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Special edition of Korean Philately on Christmas Seals 1932-1952 proposed

Korea Stamp Society’s (KSS) current Publisher/Webmaster, Ivo Spanjersberg, and I are working on issuing a special edition of the Korean Philately (KP). Originally we believed we would prepare a book or ”monogram” that would just cover Dr. Sherwood Hall’s Tuberculosis/Christmas and New Year’s seal program that occurred during the period of 1932-1940.

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More About Dr. Hall’s Stamp Collecting And Missionaries in Korea

It is encouraging that we are receiving so much new information from members of the Korea Stamp Society (KSS) and readers of the KSS website. In particular, I have been amazed at all the new information we have been receiving about Dr. Hall and other missionaries in Korea prior to WWII. This article is an […]

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1913 SPG Postcard showing missionary residence

On Kobay, the Korean version of Ebay, mission history-related philatelic items are often available. Here is one of many of these items – a postcard sent within Great Britain from Grimsby to Skidbrooke on 19 February 1913. Both of these places are coastal towns in north east Lincolnshire. Grimsby is a major fishing port, whereas […]

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Christian Literature Society correspondence illustrates different surface mail cachets

A series of covers, recently offered for sale on Ebay, show another interesting piece of Korean missionary history. The Christian Literature Society of Korea (대한 기독교 서회) was and is a major publisher and bookseller in Korea, and dates back to the earliest years of Protestant Christian missions. It is an ecumenical organisation as is […]

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New Discovery of Two Very Rare Covers with Dr. Hall’s Unissued 1940 Korea Tuberculosis/Christmas Seals

There was recently an exciting find by a reader of the Korea Stamp Society’s (KSS) webpage. Mr. Edwin Burgoyne, who has been researching information on old covers that were part of his wife’s (Alison) missionary family’s collection, read the articles about Dr. Sherwood Hall’s TB/Christmas and New Year’s seals. He especially noticed the article about […]

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Methodist mission address “IPO Box 1182” in Seoul

From the late 1800s a lot of Christian missionary activity took place in Korea. Given that these people usually were very well educated they inevitably wrote home. Many of these letters including the envelopes in which they were sent were saved by the recipients. In recent years with the passing of many of the post-World […]

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1963 cover from important Methodist medical missionary educator

This envelope is particularly interesting from a postal history point of view. The writer, Dr. Roberta G. Rice, was writing to Dr. Charles Mayo the head of the renowned Mayo Clinic, and his wife in a personal capacity. Dr. Rice was a member of the (American) Methodist Mission who had been appointed after the Korean […]

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Australian missionary postal history shows early links with Korea

Abacus Auctions of Glen Waverley, Victoria, Australia in its auctions for 30 November to 1 December, 2019 displayed three Korean postcards for sale, two of which are pictoral cards. The pictoral postcards are of a ‘yŏt’ (Korean confection) seller and a view of a city gate in Sŏul, possibly the Great North Gate. The text […]

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