Word: seoul
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...took in more illegal contributions. But incalculable damage to Roh's once clean image has already been done. One of the biggest embarrassments came in July when a national television network ran a videotape of Roh's personal secretary Yang Gil Seung cavorting in a sleazy nightclub south of Seoul with the club's owner?a man who has been under investigation for tax evasion, pimping and instigation of murder...
...stricken card units. A chain of collapses is unlikely. But to some observers, the situation is disturbingly like the near meltdown of South Korea's financial system in the late 1990s. "The scale [of card-company losses] is not insubstantial," says Hank Morris, an analyst with IRC Consulting in Seoul. "You're talking about real money here...
...properly assess credit risk, offering cards to just about anyone who cares to fill out an application. Privacy laws make it difficult for companies to share credit information on individuals in South Korea. Access to information is improving, but it's still not possible to verify applicants' incomes. A Seoul cosmetics salesman (who requested anonymity) applied for most of his five cards on street corners, and he says the only check was a phone call to him at his office. He's now $42,000 in debt. "Koreans ate a poison pill," says Kim Kyeong Won of the Samsung Economic...
...search is on for the antidote. At a high-rise building in central Seoul, hundreds of debtors recently waited for interviews at a new government agency, the Credit Recovery Supporting Service, set up to help them reschedule their debt. So far 17,000 people have had their burden eased?a fraction of total defaulters. Meanwhile, in a dingy suburb across town, the agency holds 90-minute cash-management classes. The teacher, former banker Kim Seung Duck, loudly exhorts borrowers to embrace the habits of the rich by "loving money and saving." Under the white glare of fluorescent lights, middle-aged...
...Indeed, debtors have set up websites to share tips on how to dodge payment, even how to get loans and new cards while deep in hock. Collecting bad debt is already a headache for lenders, because card debt is unsecured. Solomon Credit Information, a Seoul collection agency, says that only 0.5% of bills more than six months overdue are ever repaid and that recovery is costly in any case."If you lend $20,000 to someone, you can spend the same amount to get it back," says Brendan Carr, an American lawyer with Aurora Law Offices in Seoul...