11-02-2015, 08:46 AM
Now with the right ID:
I came across an award booklet for a National Flag Order, Second Class, of 1972 but with the award number given with the Prefix L, the second letter of the Korean alphabet. The only other document I could check for this award was included in the 2009 book by Sessler and McDaniel which gives the award number without prefix. Surprisingly both documents had the same date despite award numbers being about 30,000 apart suggesting lots of them were awarded on Kim Il Sung´s 60th birthday.
I know of several occassions where North Korean officials apparently made mistakes or wrote things they were not supposed to. But did anyone come across another example where these prefixes were also written into the award documents for the order of the national flag? This should have been rather common for the 3rd class. But I could not find any other example.
After comparing the documents presented in this 2009 book I also figured out that all four-digit numbers in the documents were the numbers of the legal document awarding the honor instead of the actual award or booklet number. The official document only used the actual word "legal document number" or "decree number" (정령) from around the early 1990s. The oldest booklet with the legal number was issued in 1975 with the basically all following award documents (at least in Sessler´s book) also giving only this number.
Ironically, in several documents random numbers were added for some mysterious reason. But going through the award documents available in the forum, I could not find any document which used this three or four-digit legal number. Quite an interesting difference.
If anyone came across some of those four-digit numbers or suspects that the original number was tampered with, I would be glad if you let me know. Because I am currently researching North Korea's legal activity over time, I would be very interested in any of those numbers.
Preserving the awardee's anonymity might be a little bit easier as every decree usually gave awards to several people - at times even hundreds - and I would not need the last two digits of the legal number. In fact, I do not need any other information except that number and the year and month if that makes it easier to share this information.
In return, I can offer translating Korean.
I came across an award booklet for a National Flag Order, Second Class, of 1972 but with the award number given with the Prefix L, the second letter of the Korean alphabet. The only other document I could check for this award was included in the 2009 book by Sessler and McDaniel which gives the award number without prefix. Surprisingly both documents had the same date despite award numbers being about 30,000 apart suggesting lots of them were awarded on Kim Il Sung´s 60th birthday.
I know of several occassions where North Korean officials apparently made mistakes or wrote things they were not supposed to. But did anyone come across another example where these prefixes were also written into the award documents for the order of the national flag? This should have been rather common for the 3rd class. But I could not find any other example.
After comparing the documents presented in this 2009 book I also figured out that all four-digit numbers in the documents were the numbers of the legal document awarding the honor instead of the actual award or booklet number. The official document only used the actual word "legal document number" or "decree number" (정령) from around the early 1990s. The oldest booklet with the legal number was issued in 1975 with the basically all following award documents (at least in Sessler´s book) also giving only this number.
Ironically, in several documents random numbers were added for some mysterious reason. But going through the award documents available in the forum, I could not find any document which used this three or four-digit legal number. Quite an interesting difference.
If anyone came across some of those four-digit numbers or suspects that the original number was tampered with, I would be glad if you let me know. Because I am currently researching North Korea's legal activity over time, I would be very interested in any of those numbers.
Preserving the awardee's anonymity might be a little bit easier as every decree usually gave awards to several people - at times even hundreds - and I would not need the last two digits of the legal number. In fact, I do not need any other information except that number and the year and month if that makes it easier to share this information.
In return, I can offer translating Korean.
