North Korea has twice attempted to launch satellites into space in the past: once in 1998 and once in 2009. The success of the launches is an issue of debate — monitors, both governmental and amateur, never managed to detect signals from the 2009 satellite — but they were immortalized on two North Korean postage stamps.

The first is from 1998 and illustrates the August 31st launch of Kwangmyongsong-1.

The launch came during the country’s “arduous march,” a period of extreme famine in the country that is estimated to have killed between 900,000 and 3.5 million people. At the end of the year, North More >