|
四年前，一位女销售员不期而至，来到发型师刘宰一工作的发廊，要他申请一张信用卡，当时三十岁的刘宰一立刻申请了该信用卡，而对方根本没有检查他的信用记录和收入状况。从那一天起，刘宰一的债务问题就开始了。当他发现自己没有能力还贷后，他又申请了另外一张信用卡，以此把第一张信用卡上的帐还清了。随着他的借款数量扶摇直上，为了填补亏空，他用信用卡借款买股票，作最后一搏。不幸的是，这次炒股失败了，现在，刘先生欠下6家信用卡公司累计达5000万韩元(合42,600美元)的债务。
|
Yoo Jae-il's debt problems
started four years ago, when a saleswoman walked uninvitedsintosthe hair
salonswhereshe worked as a stylist and offered him a credit card. The 30
year-old signed up on the spot without any checks being made on his credit
history or earnings. When he found himself unable to repay his bill, he
secured a second card to clear the debts on his first. As his borrowings
spiralled, he used his credit cards to buy stocks in a desperate bid to
recoup his losses. But the investments failed and today Mr Yoo owes Won50m
(,600) to six different card companies.
|
|
“信用卡公司开始天天打电话催款，”他说。“他们甚至要我姐姐给我还债。我很郁闷，每天晚上都想去自杀。”
|
"The credit card
companies started calling me every day," he says. "They even
tried to make my sister pay my debts. I became depressed and considered
suicide every night."
|
|
刘先生只不过是几百万有同样遭遇的韩国人中的一个。多年来，由于肆意放贷，韩国银行和信用卡公司的坏帐堆积成山，近几个月来，这些银行和信用卡公司来了个紧急刹车，遭此突变的几百万韩国人顿时无法承受。
|
Mr Yoo is one of millions of
South Koreans that have been overwhelmed by debt in recent months as years
of reckless lending by the country's banks and credit card companies
ground to a halt beneath a mountain of bad loans.
|
|
9月末，350万韩国人未能按期还款，他们占韩国工作人口的16%。另外，信用卡欠款一个月以上的约有10%，而美国仅为4%。
|
At the end of September,
3.5m South Koreans - 16 per cent of the working population - were
classified as debt defaulters and about 10 per cent of the country's
credit card debt was overdue by at least one month, compared to 4 per cent
in the US.
|
|
韩国信贷的混乱局面应该追溯到1997年亚洲金融危机刚结束的时候。当时政府鼓励消费者贷款，以此刺激经济，给危机重重的制造业提供发展机会。过去很多年，政府总是鼓励人民节衣缩食，省下钱来支持国家的工业化建设。突然间，政府又说借钱和消费是爱国之举。
|
South Korea's credit binge
started after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, when the government
encouraged consumer borrowing to reflate the economy and provide an
alternative source of growth to the troubled manufacturing sector. After
years of being urged to save money to fund the country's industrialisation,
South Koreans were suddenly told it was their patriotic duty to borrow and
spend.
|
|
韩国储蓄率过去在全世界名列前茅，1995年的储蓄率为35.5%,
但是，今年预计会降至27.3%。与此同时，家庭债务与国内生产总值(GDP)的比率自1998年来翻了一番，达80%，与美国水平相当。
|
The country's savings rate,
once among the highest in the world, has fallen from 35.5 per cent in 1995
to a forecast 27.3 per cent this year, while the ratio of household debt
to gross domestic product has doubled since 1998 to nearly 80 per cent,
similar to the US level.
|
|
但是，韩国人在商业贷款方面经验不足，突然要他们去面对能够轻易获得的低息贷款，他们一时间无所适从。与信用卡相关的自杀屡屡发生。一位34岁的母亲因财务危机陷入绝望，带着自己和三个年幼的孩子从高高的公寓楼上跳下来，结束了自己和孩子们的生命。
|
However, with little
experience of commercial borrowing, South Koreans struggled to handle the
sudden availability of cheap credit. In one of a series of debt-related
suicides, a 34 year-old mother threw herself and her three young children
out of a high-rise apartment block to their deaths in July, because of
despair about their financial plight.
|
|
文化因素使得债务的社会影响更为恶化。比如说，韩国人讲义气，亲戚朋友若遇到债务问题，他们总觉得自己有责任伸出援手。另外，韩国人把破产当成奇耻大辱。今年4月，一位61岁的老人因女儿的负债问题而服毒自尽。“我女儿没有工作，真不知道信用卡公司为什么要给她这么多信用卡，”他在写给韩国总统卢武铉的遗言中说。
|
The social impact of debt
has been worsened by cultural factors, such as the obligation that Koreans
feel for the debts of their friends of relatives and the stigma attached
to personal bankruptcy. In April, a 61 year-old man fatally poisoned
himself because of his daughter's debts. "I don't understand why
credit companies issued dozens of cards to [my daughter] even though she
didn't have a job," he wrote in a suicide note to South Korean
president Roh Moo-hyun.
|
|
韩国的教训为其它亚洲国家敲响了警钟。该地区经济的增长点正从出口导向型经济向国内信贷消费转变。
|
South Korea's experience
serves as a warning to other Asian countries, at a time when the region's
export-driven economies are turning to credit-financed domestic
consumption as a fresh source of growth.
|
|
亚洲金融危机结束后的五年间，信用卡似乎是解决韩国经济困难的灵丹妙药。韩国的很多银行因公司坏帐而濒临破产，但随着消费者贷款的迅速上升，这些银行又扭亏为盈。家庭消费的增加也导致更大范围的经济复苏。很多人对国内消费的增长大加赞扬，说它扭转了过于依赖出口的局面，他们说这是个良性转变。
|
For the first five years
after the Asian financial crisis, credit cards appeared to offer the
answer to all South Korea's economic woes. Banks brought close to collapse
by bad corporate loans were catapulted back to profit by the rapid growth
in lending to consumers, while the resulting surge in household spending
drove recovery in the wider economy. Increased domestic consumption was
hailed as a healthy rebalancing of an economy that had become too heavily
reliant on exports.
|
|
但是，我们逐渐看到，1997年金融危机前银行在公司金融业务中所犯的错误已经在个人金融业务中重演了：它们不对客户的信用程度进行充分审查，就随意放贷出去。信用卡和个人贷款的发放就如同发糖果一样。贷款方个个在争抢快速增长的消费贷款市场。目前，韩国的成人平均每人拥有4.5张信用卡。
|
However, it slowly became
clear that banks were repeating with households the mistakes they made in
the corporate sector before the 1997 crisis: lending too freely without
adequate checks on customers' credit-worthiness. Credit cards and personal
loans were handed out like confetti as lenders rushed to grab share of the
fast-growing consumer credit market. The average South Korean adult today
possesses 4.5 credit cards.
|
|
信用市场泛滥无度的情形终于在去年暴露出来，政府开始干预，迫使借款人规范放贷程序。突然间，唾手可得的信用没有了，大量现有的债务成了坏帐。现在，借款公司在想尽办法收回透支贷款，但是很多逾期者根本不愿偿还，因为他们相信只要长期撑下去，他们的债务就会被一笔勾销。
|
As the excesses of the
credit boom were exposed last year, the government stepped in to force
lenders to tighten their procedures. Suddenly the flow of easy credit
dried-up and large amounts of existing debt turned bad. Now, lenders are
struggling to retrieve their advances but many defaulters are reluctant to
pay because they believe their debts will be written off if they hold out
long enough.
|
|
“不能只怪拖欠的人，信用卡公司也难辞其咎，”刘先生说。刘先生现在负责一个支援拖欠贷款者的网上团体。“信用卡公司应该多对用户进行审查，而且不要这么轻而易举地提高信用额度。”
|
"The credit card
companies must share the blame with defaulters," says Mr Yoo, who
operates an online supportsgroupsfor credit delinquents. "Card firms
should have made more checks on users and not raised credit limits so
easily."
|
|
译者/柏林
|
