Korea 1577

     To mark the 60th anniversry of the Russian Revolution North Korea issued this stamp in 1977 with a map of the entire Korean peninsula. The Universal Postal Union Convention requires the name of the issuing country must be on the stamp in English characters (Article 8, paragraph 3.1). It is missing from this stamp. It is possible that the postal authority thought the English characters "DPRK" at the bottom of the stamp satisfied the requirement.

     It is frequently the case with China, Korea, Japan and other far eastern countries that the name of the issuing country in English does not appear. It could also be considered an error that North Korea included the territory of South Korea in its map.