Memorabilia from North Korea: Stamps.
As you may or may not know, I went to North Korea for 2 weeks in October of 2005. During my time there I was very fortunate to visit Pyongyang, Paekdusan, Kaeseong, and the DMZ. I took a huge number of photos, over a thousand in all, and posted them on my site (not all thousand, but certainly a generous number) which can all be viewed from this link. To say it was one of the more eye-opening experiences of my life would be a massive understatement and I felt I walked away from North Korea a little more wiser and understanding of the country, the people, and the government.
Whilst in North Korea, I also managed to pick up a lot of memorabilia in the forms of books, money, pins, cards, and other little bits and pieces. I haven’t really thought about them in a while but was reminded when reading an interesting post on the Marmot’s Hole, a very good and informative blog written here in Korea. In particular in the article was the mention of North Korean stamps and the sort of fascination regarding them.
I was very lucky to have the opportunity to visit a post office while in Pyongyang (and most likely the only time I’ll feel that way about going to a post office) and took the time to purchase several as a keepsake. Since there is a definite interest in North Korean stamps out there, I thought I would share them with you.
In fact, I figured I may as well share most of what I brought back from North Korea, in case a handful of people out there are interested (and I can think of at least two people who would be). Over the next coming weeks I’ll present some short posts with some of the memorabilia I brought back with me starting with Stamps today.
If you have any feedback, please feel free to comment, but please remember you need to be registered and logged in to do so. If anyone would like copies of the images without the watermarks (as simple as they are) please email me and I’m sure we can work something out.
All images have been scanned on my trusty Samsung scanner. The larger pieces, and there are a couple, I’ve had to do piece by piece and join them back up in Adobe Photoshop, in case you wonder why there are some joining lines in some of the images.
So, without further ado, let me present; Stamps from North Korea.
Some of these images are quite large for the blog, but if you click on them you can view them in much greater detail through Flickr.
Not quite a stamp, but my train ticket from Dandong to Beijing. At Dandong I changed from the North Korean train from Pyongyang, onto a Chinese one bound to Beijing. I also had a nice conversation with a North Korean solider inspecting my baggage and at least 5 stripes on each shoulder.
My boarding pass from Beijing to Pyongyang.
When I was in Pyongyang it coincided with the Workers Party 50th Anniversary (don’t quote me on that).
It’s all over the news that the North are trying to get a satellite into space this month. Let it be known that here, first on staypuff.net, you learnt that not only have North Korea already been into space, but they have also visited all the planets of the solar system, including some freaky purple ones.
The outside cover of the space series of photos.
A foldout pamphlet I picked up at the post office.
Some of the other stamps on sale at the post office.
I actually would have liked to have bought more stamps, but as you can imagine dealing with 27-odd foreigners in the post office at the one time was a little demanding for the staff. In fact, I was lucky to get what I did as many people didn’t get a chance to buy anything due to the limited time we had there. I was really quite please with what I got.
Stay tuned, another memorabilia post will come soon.
Links in the series;
Tags: North Korea, stamps, travel
North Korean Photos and Info. | David | 
12/3/2009 - Thursday 11:59 am
3 Comments
Other Links to this Post
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Staypuff.net » Memorabilia from North Korea: Books (Pyongyang Review & 100 Questions and Answers) — 9/4/2009 - Thursday @ 8:07 am
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Staypuff.net » Memorabilia from North Korea: North Korean Pins. — 12/10/2009 - Monday @ 10:44 am
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Staypuff.net » Memorabilia from North Korea: North Korean Money. — 12/10/2009 - Monday @ 10:47 am
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