Does Anyone Collect North Korean Stamps?

On a slightly different topic but in bad taste ;these stamps showing the A bomb explosion.

There is a fairly active market in NK stamps. Most are CTO income producing products, but on the secondary market, there are many issues available. Actually used NK stamps are a bit harder to come by than the CTOs. I collect SK pre-1970, so a lot of the offerings I get include NK

I don't specifically collect N. Korea, although I have an interest in South Korea so, like "Oldguy" I do sometimes acquire N.K. when buying a page of S.K.

When I worked in South Korea, I visited the border with N.K. and bought some items in the official N.K. shop, including some used/CTO stamps.

A few years later, when based in the U.A.E., I visited the Stamp Exhibition held in Dubai next to the Airport (2006?). The N.K. Philatelic Agency had a booth there, where I bought a 2002 Yearbook. Some interesting stamps, sheetlets and MS, together with some fairly propagandistic text.

It can be a little frustrating when searching for S.K. on the web to find sellers who can't, or don't bother to, differentiate between North and South when describing and listing Korean stamps. Of course ebay rules and/or local policies may not allow them to do so!

It's really just a curiosity for me. I know at one point it was illegal for US stamp dealers to carry Cuban stamps and they were very hard to get. I'm curious if there are similar problems with North Korean stamps.

NK derives a great deal of income from its philatelic bureau which goes directly into Rocket Mans pocket. That and the fact that the latest 2017 issues show missiles hitting the White House and Capital and our soldiers screaming while on fire pretty much means I want nothing to do with it. Once he is dead they will become historical artifacts.

I wouldn't purposely buy any of their stamps as I won't support, even in a small way, what is probably the most repressive regime on the planet at the moment. Read up on what some of the defectors who have managed to escape say about the place - they imprison entire families for generations and execute starving people for stealing bowls of rice, among a long list of other things. If I were alive then, I don't think I'd have purchased contemporary mint German stamps during the Third Reich era, either, although I do collect them today.

Meanwhile, from the London Review of Books blog -

From my experience, CTO's of NK and Cuba are widespread in ebay's kiloware and bulk sells.
Secondly, there's no mail embargo on those countries, so at various sites of stamps exchanging, one can find collectors from those countries that would trade.
Furthermore (as I was offered), one can make a deal with a collector, to send them new stamps from your country in exchange for the same from their country.