It's a crime that even the most creative novelists and screenplay writers wouldn't come up with.
All the staples of a good story -- murder, intrigue, police chases -- are there. Yet the motive seems too fanciful: Debt.
Welcome to South Korea, the site of such bizarre goings on.
Just last week, two men posing as taxi drivers strangled six women within 48 hours. The motive: Robbery to pay off credit card debts. A handful of others have been killed for similar reasons, while suicides by overextended cardholders are on the rise.
It's the most extreme side effect of the nation's sudden love affair with plastic. While names like American Express, MasterCard and Visa have been here for many a year, Koreans are savers who've long favored cash over credit.
That's all changing now. Walking around the streets of Seoul, one confronts a barrage of hawkers handing out credit-card applications. It's a reminder that South Korea is a rapidly growing market for card issuers. Data show that credit-card use has risen roughly 90 percent a year since 1998. And South Koreans, who two years ago averaged fewer than two cards apiece, now use four.
The trend worries economists who wonder if South Korean households, who have less experience with high-interest debt than peers abroad, are getting in over their heads. Part of the problem, they say, is that a fast-growing number of credit-card transactions aren't purchases, but cash advances.
"It's not a huge, huge problem yet, but it's something Korean authorities need to keep an eye on," says like Andy Xie of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co.
The government deserves some of the blame. Seoul, in an effort to cut down on tax fraud among merchants, offered consumers tax breaks for using plastic. That not only encouraged people to use credit cards more often, but also drove banks and non-bank lenders to step up marketing efforts. Government tax revenue may be up, but so are individual debt levels.
Concerns about a credit bubble may help explain why the central bank here is so set on raising interest rates. Even though South Korea is seen growing 5.7 percent this year, inflation isn't a big problem yet. The Bank of Korea, however, is looking ahead and figuring it should tap on the brakes. Rising household borrowing may be one of the catalysts for such a move.
A hike in borrowing costs would be a faster way of slowing credit growth than anything the government could do. After all, credit cards aren't hard to get here. Walk down many major streets and you'll see tables and chairs set up -- all you do is fill out a quick application, and you're almost assured a card.
Given its traditional preference for cash, South Korea lacks sophisticated networks of credit-history reports.
All of this has local economists and politicians urging steps to rein in credit growth. Suggestions include making it harder to get plastic. Only recently, for example, have issuers been asked to obtain proof of income from young applicants. Also being mulled are steps to reduce cash-advances and scrutinize non-bank issuers, including those huge business groups known as chaebol.
Marketing of credit cards picked up after the 1997 Asia financial crisis. Banks had made a good living lending to chaebol. But when the roof fell in, the government directed banks to lend elsewhere. Much of the lending at first was for homes and cars. Nowadays, credit-card debt is becoming a bigger share of that whole.
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