KOSPI · October 10, 2002

Card debt and a global slide

-5.79%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Eleven months when the card bills came due

midway through · 2002-04-18 → 2003-03-17, -45.05% over the whole period

What happened that day?

On 10 October 2002 the KOSPI fell 5.79% in a single day
The KOSPI had risen a long way into early 2002 as consumer spending recovered and domestic-facing companies did well
But much of that spending was on credit cards, and issuers had handed them out without checking whether people could repay
From the second half, delinquencies surged and worry about the card companies grew
US markets were making their dot-com low around the same time
The card problem broke out properly the following year and did more damage in 2003

Sources

Economy of South Korea
Dot-com bubble

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 written from the sources listed above.