« Shakespeare on Bankruptcy Reform | Main | A K Street Theory of Bankruptcy Reform »

Meanwhile, On the Other Side of the Planet

posted by Buce

We tend to think of the United States as the bankruptcy capital of the galaxy.  Here's a story from the Korea Times reporting that bankruptcy petitions hit 380,000 in Korea in 2005.

Do the math.  Korea has a population of about 48 million.  That's a petitions/population ratio of about 0.79 percent.  Figure the pre-BAPCPA United States rate at 1.6 million to 300 million.  That's about 0.53 percent.  So Korea is about 50 percent ahead of the pre-BAPCPA United States.  Apparently the Koreans have had their own bout with “bankruptcy reform:”

Last year’s figure is 90 times that of 2002, the year the system was adopted.

The bankruptcy system allows people to get their debt written off by the court. The number of those who filed for bankruptcy has increased year by year, especially since 2003, when many people accumulated credit card debt.

Fn:  I had a couple of Korean grad students a few years back, who described themselves as “bankruptcy judges.”  Nice kids, spoken English not so hot, writing just fine.  One of them gave me a weird mask which still presides over my office.  Neither one, I suspect, had reached his 30th birthday.  I wonder if they are presiding over this revolution?

Technical Meta-Fn: Doesn't it make your head spin when you type "United States population" into the Firefox subject line and get bopped right over to the Census bureau poulation calculator?

Comments

The comments to this entry are closed.

Contributors

Current Guests

Follow Us On Twitter

Like Us on Facebook

  • Like Us on Facebook

    By "Liking" us on Facebook, you will receive excerpts of our posts in your Facebook news feed. (If you change your mind, you can undo it later.) Note that this is different than "Liking" our Facebook page, although a "Like" in either place will get you Credit Slips post on your Facebook news feed.

Categories

Bankr-L

  • As a public service, the University of Illinois College of Law operates Bankr-L, an e-mail list on which bankruptcy professionals can exchange information. Bankr-L is administered by one of the Credit Slips bloggers, Professor Robert M. Lawless of the University of Illinois. Although Bankr-L is a free service, membership is limited only to persons with a professional connection to the bankruptcy field (e.g., lawyer, accountant, academic, judge). To request a subscription on Bankr-L, click here to visit the page for the list and then click on the link for "Subscribe." After completing the information there, please also send an e-mail to Professor Lawless ([email protected]) with a short description of your professional connection to bankruptcy. A link to a URL with a professional bio or other identifying information would be great.

OTHER STUFF