Public opinion had soured with alarming speed.

Even the insolvency of other card companies was chalked up as Ilhyeon's fault, and people came to regard it not as a problem confined to Ilhyeon Card but as a problem of the entire Ilhyeon Group.

To resolve the matter, the government announced the establishment of a bad bank.

The idea was that the bad bank would take on the card companies' nonperforming loans, salvaging what could be salvaged and discarding what had to be discarded.

And the government said that the funds to establish this bad bank would be borne, more than half of them, by the various corporations and financial firms, while the government would put up only a minimal amount of support.

But people did not take the government at its word.

Once again there was money going to bail out corporations, and negative public sentiment about taxes being spent that way gave rise to voices grumbling against the government's decision.

—A bad bank? No, this is wrong.

An economics professor who took a dim view of the bad bank appeared on a debate program and raised his voice at the government official seated across from him.

—A place that deserves to fail must be left to fail; only then does a healthy market take shape. If the government intervenes and rescues even the places that ought to go under, the tumor will only grow larger.

At the professor's assertion, the government official looked troubled.

—Do that, and the system itself will break down. We must not, swept up by the mood, let places fail that don't need to fail. And it is precisely such a system that the government would be taking the lead in building.

—Isn't that spending taxes to bail out corporations? Do you really think it a proper state of affairs for the government to use taxes to rescue a place like Ilhyeon Card, a place that ought to fail?

The government official could not answer the professor's question.

The professor pressed him.

—If the government keeps rescuing corporations, the moral hazard among corporate managers will…