N. Korea Celebrates Successful Icbm Launch

These images appeared on the Reuters wires today: New stamps issued in commemoration of the successful launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile are seen in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on August 8, 2017

Reuters has not been able to independently verify the images

I think you mean ICBM launch not IBM. I found the typo humorous.

Thanks for the heads up, thought it sounded a bit strange.....

Isn't it ironic. They hate the US so much while at the same time their philatelic output usually is annotated in English. If they were to lob a nuke at us they'd lose a lucrative market for them. But then if they did that, they probably won't exist any longer.

Anyone else notice- they show the whole of Korea in red on one of the sheets and on one stamp. Nice.

1962- I did notice that about the map and was going to post about it but you beat me to it

Very old school Russian type propaganda stamps....without the deco style!
I wouldn't mind a set if they are fair dinkum stamps.

The philatelic market is unimportant to the DPRK and cannot possibly generate meaningful revenue for it. These stamps serve as press releases dressed up in another form. The English text exists solely for the benefit of the Western media. Once a news story is written about the stamps, they have served their purpose and sales of the stamps don't matter.

I wonder if they will issue a Rocket mail cover?

It would be nice to have these because they are so off-the-wall.

"Gullible collectors" Steady stream of revenue"
I believe China has the big buyers and a whole lot of collectors/speculators.

http://www.newsweek.com/north-korea...siles-637752

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/16/arts/...s/index.html

In the CNN article linked above, the author, Oscar Holland, doesn't seem to know much about stamp collecting:

"The world's stamp market is changing, and North Korean designs are evolving to reflect shifting demand. In the 1980s, images of Princess Diana and German tennis star Steffi Graf were used to attract Western collectors. Today, China is the main target, according to King. Nobody in Europe or North America collects stamps anymore," he said. "Now, (North Korea's) stamps are pushing Chinese themes because they know that Chinese collectors are buying them.

It's news to me that "nobody" in Europe or America collects stamps anymore.

As for another of his remarks, the one about "gullible" collectors, what's gullible about someone collectors buying interesting stamps? They'd only be gullible if they were tricked into buying them or if they assumed they'd make money from buying them. If I buy a strange or colorful stamps from a strange dictatorship which depends on crude propaganda to make its points, I'd admittedly be worried my money was helping to prop up that government. But I wouldn't feel "gullible" because I wanted to collect (and document, really) the strangeness of a place.

Many collectors bought Italian, Japanese, and German stamps in the 1930s, stamps that were often very well made and which were interesting at the time and remain interesting today. It may be a little creepy to think about, but collections today with those stamps are perfectly legitimate even if we strongly disagree with the purpose of the stamps.

The same thing goes for buying USSR stamps during the Cold War, Iranian stamps of the last 30 or so years, Cuba, Angola, Juan Peron's Argentina, and so on. Collectors bought the stamps of the Congo Free State and later the Belgian Congo despite the horrors that went on in that country. Were their purchases wrong? Maybe, if they were helping "prop up" the government. But in the long run, maybe not much. And having such stamps is an historical benefit for a collector to understand what happened there.

One of the appeals of stamp collecting is its worldwide focus. We look at the world as it is and try to make sense of it. Countries we don't like we can still collect. The People's Republic of China is still a one-party state with severe limitations of human rights. Should we not collect its stamps? Collectors often focus on documenting each country's changing culture and history through its stamps, and that includes the good times and the bad. I understand government boycotts of products from certain countries, including stamps (Cuba, etc.). I don't understand, though, why a few collectors buying stamps from a country matters to most people. And how many people even collect North Korean stamps? It can't be many.

Indeed they do remind me very much of the USSR space achievements stamps, the difference being that the Soviets did not have photoshop and their stamps look better than these in my opinion, but also serve a propaganda purpose.