Seoul fund managers protest SK, credit card fallout

Foreign fund managers say the South Korean government has resorted to old-style arm-twisting tactics to make them bail out credit card companies, in a replay of tactics that regulators had supposedly moved beyond. Credit card companies sprang up in 2001 and 2002 as the vanguard of Korea's consumer-led growth, but the government slammed the brakes when household lending surged last year by 30%, with half of that in the form of cash withdrawals. The predictable result: a surge in non-p…