“I Want to Become Rich Next Year”

With a few days left beofre the New Year, numerous articles expressing their regrets regarding 2003, and hopes and resolutions for the New Year are continuously being posted on the Internet, particularly on financial technology and savings related community websites provided by portal sites.

Although most of the articles express personal desire to become rich, people do not forget to reply to these articles, often giving sincere advice or suggestions.

When a portal site conducted an online survey for a week asking where you would invest money in 2004, as many as 5,000 people responded. Among the respondents, 70 percent of them said that they would rather spend less and deposit money in the bank instead of investing their money in real estates or stocks.

Such a result reflects a change of mind allegedly influenced by the recession in 2003 and the emerging “I wanna be rich” phenomenon.

At one community site named How to Make One Billion Won, over 200 people in the past month posted articles in connection with their detailed New Year’s plan.

Many of the articles, which were written by businessmen, office workers, housewives and students, are full of useful information and tips.

“My annual income is about 33 million won after taxes. I deposit 4.2 million won in installment savings a year and I have savings of eight million won in banks. The total monthly expenditure is 1.2 million won, including the installment saving and insurance premiums. I have two cars and the bills for cell phones are…”

Reply: “I cannot believe you are in the red. Check out tax-free products for the installment savings. And why do you need two cars? You’d better sell one.”

Although there were a number of Internet community sites in which people exchanged information on real estate and stock investment, they did not exchange such detailed personal accounts before.

In particular, ambitious plans for delinquent borrowers, which now account for some four million people, are drawing attention.

One internet user posted an article on a message board of the Deliquent Borrowers’ Association website saying, “I spent too much money. One year later, I found myself in credit card debt of 10 million won, no savings. I wanted to kill myself.”

“I will do any kind of labor, if it is necessary to pay off my debts. I felt and leant a lot from you guys’ advice of handling money,” the user added.

One office worker in his 30s says, “I and my wife severely suffered from financial difficulties and at the end got involved in a pyramid scheme. But we now have even greater debts than before. I want to go back to the past. Although we were poor, we were happy. I will spend as little as I can and save as much as I can in the next five years to pay off all my debts.”

And people replied, saying “I sincerely believe you can make it,” “Thanks, I realized I also have to be careful and start to save money.”

On this phenomenon, Cho Dae-yeop, sociology professor at the Korea University said, “The resolutions of those people are creating fresh stirs in a society that is depressed because of the news of tens of billion of won of corruption cases.”

Cho, however, pointed out, “It can also be interpreted as a tragic phenomenon in which people desperately seek to ways to survive because they no longer trust the government or market.”

jarrett@donga.com