With the 1st generation of The National Park Stamp Tour Passports ‘expiring’ on September 30th, this is best time to review what the new generation has to offer.
This article is meant to serve as an update to the program, for the full information about the stamp tour passport check out this guide.
The Changes
+ Extension in the validity of Gen 1 passports to 2025.12.31
With the Gen 1 stamp tour passports set to expire on 2023. 9. 30 – this new generation brings good news. It was feared that the deadline would be enforced, making September the last month to apply for your prize. A worry stoked by the lack of public announcement in the Gen 2 documents and details. But I’m happy to announce that I was able to get confirmation from a KNPS employee that the September 30th deadline is gone and the first generation will now have its deadline likewise set to 2025.12.31. This means you have the next 2.5 years to collect the stamps either on the generation 1 or the generation 2 passport and make your submission!
+ One per person & ID required
Gone are the days of you picking up a stamp tour passport for all your friends, now you must bring your ID, but with some reporting online that you just need a phone number in order to get the new booklet. It’s likely that your name or number will go on a list, and you will not be able to get another one. Minors can get their own passports but they must be with their parent/guardian (who will likely need to provide ID).
+ Hallasan National Park
While there are some minor changes, such as a slight larger booklet with QR codes and a memo page – the main change is the addition of Jeju’s Hallasan National Park. But oddly enough this additional mountain is completely optional.
Like the first program, full details can be seen here, you are able to apply for a achievement prize at either 10 stamps ‘잎새/leaf level’ or having completed the booklet for the ‘나무/tree’ level (you can get both at tree level or apply for them individually). But the tree level can be applied for at just 21 stamps, instead of the full 22; making Hallasan an optional park to visit. This was perhaps done because of the extension of the 1st Gen’s deadline to match Gen 2. With Gen 1 only having 21 entries, a mandatory Hallasan policy would have restricted Gen 1 users from applying for the tree level.
+ Website
The Korean National Park Service (KNPS) has made a new website for the national park program with the same tour instructions and stamp location information that be found in the booklet itself. They additionally have done the same for the Marine national park tour program as well. But besides that, the website lacks any other function at the moment with numerous ‘coming soon” pages, but perhaps they will continue to improve it over time.
+ Change in prizes ?
There is a possibility that there has been a change in the reward, but it has not been confirmed yet. This speculation comes from the fact that on the reward section it once said “Patch and Medal” and now it says ‘souvenir’ – which seems like an odd change if there were keeping the exact same rewards. But time will tell.
Unchanged
The content and style of the passport (interior content and exterior)
Expect the same issues with finding a passport in the long run
While there has been another restocking, the demand for the program along Koreans and foreigners alike is only growing – once again its likely that popular national parks will be running out of stock. Though hopefully the new ‘one passport per person’ rule, will make them more available.
According to publicly available Korean government funding documents they will be printing/have printed 100,000 copies for 2023 – the same number they printed in 2022 and completely sold out of.
My best advice for tracking one down is to (1) try less known/frequented national parks; and to (2) call ahead to check if they are available – there are numbers listed for each of the park offices in the booklet or on the online website.
Long wait times to receive the completion reward
With people online talking about waiting weeks to months to receive their prize, this is not likely to change.
KNPS budgeted for a 20% completion rate and have ordered 20,000 reward packages. As far as I’ve heard they didn’t under budget on reward packages in 2021-2022, but instead have claimed not enough people have completed the challenge (with KNPS reporting 8,000 having submitted their applications between 2020-2022). They go on to say that as they only send out the rewards in batches, so this low number in applications is slowing things down. Maybe this will be less of a problem in the future with more people getting further along in the challenge, as well as a projected increase in the KNPS’s budget for this program – much of this increased budget going to categories more management based.
Happy Trekking!
– Aurora
Hi, this is really helpful, thank you! I do have one question. I noticed it said leaf OR tree award. Are we only allowed to apply for one award?
I recently got my 10th stamp and applied for the leaf award. But does that mean I’m now ineligible to apply for the tree award later when I finish the book and get 22 stamps? Do I need to obtain a new passport book if I want to one day get the tree award?
Thanks again!
There was conflicted reports in the past about this issue – seems like some KNPS employees were misinformed. But it has been confirmed that you can apply for both. I have edited the article, thank you for bringing it to my attention that this error was carried through to this post.
For absolute proof, I applied for tree level yesterday and they will be mailing me leaf as well. I hadn’t applied for leaf previously because I had been told it would be my only chance to apply by a staffer (thus why the error made it into this article).
Good luck with your stamp quest! 🙂
Hi, this is really helpful, thank you! I do have one question. I noticed it says leaf OR tree award. Are we only allowed to apply for one award, for each book?
I recently got my 10th stamp and applied for the leaf award. Does that mean I’m now ineligible to apply for the tree award later when I finish the book and get all 22 stamps? Do I need to obtain a new passport book if I want to one day get the tree award?
Thanks again!
I’ve recently gotten conflicting reports, which had me consult some KNPS employees and the new rules – but it appears that this is an old policy, and it has now been updated to ‘ one per stage’ so you will be able to get both leaf and tree. So no reason to worry! I actually just finished and submitted my own Tree level, and because of the old policy I never submitted for leaf. They will be mailing me both leaf and tree.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention that the old policy is inaccurate in this page. Im editing it now.