Hi! I just wanted to share something super interesting…
Today, my mum, who’s in Italy, told me that I got a South Korean postcard. I read it with pleasure and registered it. It took the card more than 80 days to reach my abode – after moving to Germany I changed my address, which means that whatever reaches my old address in Italy must be a card that has been sent a very long time ago.
After talking to other Italian postcrossers, I realised that they’ve also received their South Korean postcards today!
I then went to check the South Korean postcards’ wall (click here) and the most recent cards from South Korea (those dated from November, 30th) were all sent to Italy!
Now, I know what happened: probably the Italian postal system received all South Korean postcards at the same time, and they’re being all delivered in these two or three days! But still, I just wanted to share this neat little postal “wonder”…
Cool - a variation of this has kind of happened to me recently too - multiple cards from China, posted at different times all delivered to me on the same day. I think it’s to do with reduced air passenger connections - bags of mail that would just travel by air when space was available now have to wait longer until there is space or until a freight plane goes so they all pile up and travel in one go. And Italy got it’s first consignment of South Korean mail yesterday .
That’s not even that far from reality… Did you know that a politician, Alessandra Mussolini, used to sing in Japanese??
So much irony, given how we all know that she’s the granddaughter of… mhmm, you know aha.
Yeah, exactly! Just a huge wave of South Korean cards flooding into the country. It’s kinda cool tbh, there aren’t even that many South Korean users on Postcrossing – I still see my S. Korean cards as relatively rare (I only have 3 so far, and I’m a member since 2016!).
That happens with Russia usually… Last month, I got 4 Russian postcards on the same day! Well, that doesn’t seem like that much, but I never receive cards, so it was already a lot for me!
So intriguing…! I guess there haven’t been that many flights from South Korea to Italy lately, and one just arrived recently carrying all that backlog of mail?
Edit to add: 132 postcards registered in the last 24 hours or so, compared to just 6 in the period between September and now.
during my 26 months in postcrossing i received only 2 official postcards from south korea, but yesterday i received 4, sent in the first half of september
Oh, Ana and I posted at the same time! I thought it could be something like that too, but it seemed so unlikely for South Korea to be able to send to Italy if it was a really short list. But now we know!
It’s similar to the fact that I’ve received a lot from Indonesia and Malaysia because they can only send to very few countries!
That’s a very strange list. Corona-parc-situation in Italy or Luxembourg is similar to other European countries … and there are some countries on our World, New Zealand or Australia for example, which are in a much better situation.
And I know there are reduced flights, but there still is commerce going on. So if you can import xy from various countries, you should be able to import postcards too.
A strange list - but for Italian users a cool situation
We often puzzle over these lists when we’re updating them. Sometimes countries cannot send mail to their own neighboring countries, but then they can send it across the world to landlocked African countries or remote islands where nobody lives… How?!!
I think people generally assume that the same planes that transport mail in one direction will bring mail back… but that is not necessarily true, right? Postal operators can make different contracts to fly their mail to several destinations, according to what is more convenient/cheaper/faster.
With Polish Post there were many examples of mail only going one way. New Zealand could send to us as early as July but we could send mail back starting in October. We have been able to send mail to Taiwan for a while now but Taiwan still can’t send to us.
I wish we all knew way more about how the international postal systems have been changed by the pandemic - I have not found many news items on this & I’ve been looking for a while. There must be some “experts” some where who could tell us more.
And yes, it’s strange when country A can send to country B, but not vice versa. I keep forgetting to look at a country’s send list when I’m involved with direct swaps. I keep assuming it’s fine when I can send to them from Canada.
Our list was quite restricted compared to the US or UK until this fall, but I’m still puzzled why we cannot send to many Caribbean or Central American countries - those relatively close to Canada.
I fear small islands have been hit the worst, mail-wise. Without tourism and thus without reliable scheduled flights coming in, many haven’t had mail deliveries from abroad since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s hard for countries to plan the logistics of sending mail to an island, when no one knows when the next flight is going to land there.
And some Central American post offices have struggled financially for years… the pandemic is just making everything worse.
That’s really interesting, we’ve just discussed this in Russian part of the forum. How come that Russia can send to Malaysia and Taiwan, but they can’t send to Russia???
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I guess there haven’t been that many flights from South Korea to Italy lately, and one just arrived recently carrying all that backlog of mail?
Also since 2016 and with a lot more interactions than you 
It truly is random!
