Korea Post Brand Guidelines: Seoul’s 1884 Ujeongchongguk, a 2000 Agency & Bird Emblems

A first post office in Seoul, 1884.

Korea Post traces its start to the 1880s. According to Korean Wikipedia, a postal bureau called Ujeongsa was set up inside the Joseon government’s office for foreign affairs and trade in December 1882, and on 22 April 1884 the court of King Gojong established the Ujeongchongguk, the General Postal Administration, replacing the old relay-station system with a modern postal service. Hong Yeong-sik was named its first head the next day. The office began handling mail on 18 November 1884; the news agency Yonhap, reporting in November 2025, calls it the country’s first modern post office.

Its first run was short. On 4 December 1884 a group of reformers launched the Gapsin Coup at the banquet held to celebrate the opening of the new building. After the coup failed, Korean Wikipedia says, the office was abolished on 8 December and postal work stopped in January 1885. Five stamps, in values from 5 to 100 mun, had been prepared for the opening and could not be used. Yonhap gives 1893 as the year the post office opened again.

The timeline on Korean Wikipedia’s page for the agency then records international mail and membership of the Universal Postal Union from 1 January 1900, and the first postcards in May that year. In April 1905 control of the country’s communications passed to Japan, and the post and telegraph offices were reorganised. Entries for the decades of Japanese administration that followed include money orders and savings in 1905, post-office boxes in 1908, express mail in 1910 and a postal life-insurance service from 1929.

With the founding of the Republic of Korea on 15 August 1948, a Ministry of Communications took charge of the post, and in 1949 local offices took the name ucheguk, post office, that they still carry. The same timeline lists air letters in 1956, postcodes from 1 July 1970, an international express mail service in 1979, a domestic express service in 1981 and an automated mail centre in Seoul in 1990.

From ministry to agency.

The present body, known in Korean as Ujeongsaeop Bonbu, was launched on 1 July 2000, according to Korean Wikipedia, taking over the postal work of the Ministry of Information and Communication. It stayed inside government rather than becoming a company: its head is recruited on a fixed-term contract and signs a management agreement with the minister, under which the agency runs its business with its own autonomy and answers for the results. It has since moved between ministries — the Ministry of Knowledge Economy from 2008, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning from 2013 and the Ministry of Science and ICT from July 2017. On 22 December 2014 its headquarters moved from central Seoul to the Government Complex Sejong. The Korea Times described it in October 2026 as the state-run postal service under that ministry.

Korea Post is a savings bank and an insurer as well as a mail service. English Wikipedia lists its work as mail and parcels, registered mail, post-office boxes and mail-order sales of local products, postal savings, money orders and giro, postal insurance, e-commerce and parcel delivery. Korean Wikipedia records that savings and insurance were handed to the agricultural co-operative federation in 1977 and came back to the post office in July 1983, and that a new name for the postal finance business, Everrich, was adopted on 15 November 2004. It also lists check cards issued with partner card networks and shared cash-machine networks with commercial banks. English Wikipedia notes that in 2016 Korea Post made its first property investment in France.

English Wikipedia counts 3,631 post offices, without giving a date, together with international mail centres at Incheon and Busan and regional offices from Seoul to Jeju. Training, information and procurement are handled by agencies of their own. Customers also reach the post office online: stamps and commemorative products are sold through its online store at epost.go.kr, The Korea Times reported.

Design and documentation.

Postal operators are among the oldest names a country carries. Many began as royal or state services centuries ago and became companies only in recent decades, and their identities often hold on to symbols from that past while the business shifts from letters to parcels. Colour does much of the work: red, yellow, blue and orange wordmarks appear on post boxes, vans, uniforms and counters, and a colour can outlast the institution that first chose it. Denmark’s postal service wore red and yellow even before it was nationalised in 1711, and Sweden’s has used a post horn with a crown since its foundation in 1636, according to English Wikipedia.

The symbols repeat across borders. Post horns appear in several European marks; envelopes, birds in flight and arrows suggest movement elsewhere. Names matter too. Many operators use the national name in the local language, or in two or three languages at once, and some now trade under a group name that sits above the post office itself.

Their public faces have changed with the work. Websites now lead with parcels, tracking and delivery options, then letters and stamps and, for some operators, payments, money transfers or banking. Parcel lockers, service points inside shops, delivery vans and counter photography have become as common in their imagery as the post box. Stamp issues remain a design programme of their own, with commemorative sets and products for collectors, and philately keeps older issues in view.

Most of these operators are state-owned, or were until recently, so laws, annual reports and press releases are the main record of their ownership and structure. This guide sets out what those records and independent press say about each operator’s history, ownership and visual habits, and marks the companies’ own claims as theirs.

Stamps, a landmark post office and a bird emblem.

Stamps are the most visible part of Korea Post’s design work. In October 2026 it issued stamps honouring the esports player Lee Sang-hyeok, known as Faker — 140,000 sheets showing moments from his career, The Korea Times reported — and opened an exhibition about him at the Korea Post stamp museum inside Seoul Central Post Office. In November 2026, Digital Today reported, it issued 450,000 stamps marking the centenary of Hunmaengjeongeum, the six-dot Korean Braille devised by Park Du-seong; the design draws his portrait in dots, the basic element of Braille.

The first post office is kept as a landmark. The Ujeongchongguk building in Jongno, central Seoul, is a designated national historic site. Korean Wikipedia says the Ministry of Communications took it over and opened it as a memorial hall on 4 December 1972, that it was restored in May 1987, and that in 2012 it began handling mail again after 128 years, with a “slow postbox” that delivers a postcard a year after it is posted. Yonhap reported in November 2025 that it had reopened on 28 November after a renovation, with a photo area for families and a space where children can try on a letter carrier’s uniform.

The emblem has changed several times. Korean Wikipedia’s gallery shows four versions, dated 1945–1957, 1957–1983 and 1983–2010, and the current one in use since 2010, alongside a separate wordmark; Wikimedia Commons files the emblems among bird logos.

For a design guide, Korea Post shows how a government postal agency carries a lineage back to 1884, a bird emblem and a steady stamp programme across mail, savings and insurance. Compare Pos Malaysia, another national post in the region, and Hongkong Post. For this guide we use a post red, ink and a warm paper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Korea Post’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.