KOSPI · April 25, 2002
The week right after the high
-4.71%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Eleven months when the card bills came due
early in it · 2002-04-18 → 2003-03-17, -45.05% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- 25 April 2002 — the KOSPI fell 4.71% to close at 872.58. No single cause can be pinned to the day
- The high of this episode was a week behind, on 18 April — the furthest the post-crisis recovery got
- That recovery rested on domestic demand, and much of that demand was household spending on credit cards
- Borrowed money has to be repaid. From the spring of 2002 arrears began to climb and the card companies' bad debt started showing up in the figures
- American technology shares were sliding again at the same time, and Korea, heavy in chips, answers that directly
- Four sessions later the index fell by a similar amount. This was the start of an episode, not a one-day accident
- From 18 April to 6 August the index fell 28.14% over this episode
Sources
Every figure on this page is recomputed from the original daily closing prices and checked against them at build time. The account of what happened is put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.