Hong Kwon-heui, a columnist for Dong-A Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, recalled how, in the early 2000s, the streets of Seoul were littered with credit card vendors. Sitting in a Starbucks facing Sejong Avenue, he told me, “They were literally handing them out to college students, to the unemployed, to anyone who had time to fill out an application.” He said, “The country was force-feeding its people debts.”

South Koreans became hooked on plastic so dizzyingly fast that by 2003 they owned on average four credit cards each and their collective debts amounted to about $100 billion.