Korea's First Personalized Postage

Many provinces, cities, towns, companies, etc...took advantage of these personalized stamps to produce promotional brochures promoting tourism, upcoming events, groups, societies and associations. I am going to show a number of ways these stamps were used on this thread and hopefully give you all a bit of an introduction to the culture, history, food, and industry of South Korea.


World Expo 2010, Yeosu

The City of Yeosu on the southwest coast of Korea put out a promotional brochure/booklet as part of a campaign to become the city selected for the 2010 World Expo. It is a slick, well put together fold-out brochure printed by the Jeonnam (Province) Regional Communications Office.

Here is the outer sleeve.

The English translations are a bit sketchy but I am pretty sure you can get a sense of what each of the following pages is about. Yeosu is a harbor city and has a couple of nearby national parks and resort areas.



Attached to the page are clear plastic sleeves with the "Kissing Fish" personalized stamps, Sc. No. 2074 and two different labels depicting Dolsan Island and the Dolsan Grand Bridge, connecting the island to the mainland.

Page three contains two copies of Sc. No. 2073A with attached labels showing the famed culinary products of the south coast, raw fish (sashimi) and Kimchi made with Dolsan mustard leaves.

Finally, the back cover of the brochure has an aerial view of a proposed World Expo site on Yeosu Harbor with pavilions and buildings to house the different nations attending.

The 5th Hampyeong Butterfly Festival

In the southwest part of Korea lies the county of Hampyeong. Annually, in the spring, the county government holds a butterfly festival. With the help of the Hampyeong regional post office, the county government put together this tourist brochure promoting the 5th Annual Butterfly Festival to take place in 2003.

If you search Hampyeong Butterfly Festival you can find out a lot of information and pictures, especially of recent festivals. There are many blogs posted by foreign visitors to Korea who have visited this festival while either living there or visiting.

An item like this would make a great addition to a topical collection on butterflies.

Here is the cover page.

Here again are the stamps with various butterflies native to Korea.

The slogan? "To the Ocean!, To the World!" is what the caption on this descripton of the exhibition says. At the top is the building which housed the Fisheries Exhibition.