Video: Police lifted the sunken car of the family who committed a murder-suicide. Credit: Yonhap.
South Korea has been gripped by the tragic murder-suicide of a family, in which a 35-year-old husband and wife drove into the ocean with their 10-year-old daughter. On June 29, the police dredged a car with three bodies off the coast of Wan-do Island, Jeollanam-do Province 전라남도 완도, where the family went missing after telling their friends that they would be camping there.
The father of the family, who is from Gwangju, Jeollanam-do Province 전라남도 광주, reportedly lost a significant amount of money in the recent cryptocurrency crash and had to sell his small computer business. (See previous coverage, “Crypto Crash and Korea’s Elites.”) The police said prior to driving to Wan-do, the couple had searched online for “crypto,” “sleeping pills,” and suicide methods.
The tragedy is a sobering moment for South Korea’s crypto market that had been red-hot - as of early 2018, for example, KRW was the most frequently used currency for crypto trade except for USD. Investors, as well as politicians from both sides of the aisles, dismissed the entreaties from the Moon Jae-in 문재인 administration about the overheated crypto market as Luddite and Chicken Little, yet another sign that the liberal government was out of touch with the younger generation that invested heavily into crypto.
With the crashing market, however, investors are begging the government for relief. On July 1, Seoul Bankruptcy Court 서울회생법원 said it would not consider the loss caused by investments in stocks and cryptocurrency as a debt with regard to personal bankruptcy, excluding them from the amount that the bankrupt individual must repay in order to qualify for financial rehabilitation. As of 2021, 45% of individuals filing for bankruptcy were in their 20s and 30s.