After South Korea was forced to accept the largest IMF bailout in history in 1997, more than three and a half million ordinary citizens donated their wedding rings, family heirlooms, and Olympic gold medals to help repay the country's debt — collecting 227 tons of gold in four months

After South Korea was forced to accept the largest IMF bailout in history in 1997, more than three and a half million ordinary citizens donated their wedding rings, family heirlooms, and Olympic gold medals to help repay the country's debt — collecting 227 tons of gold in four months

Three and a half million Koreans lined up outside their banks in January 1998 to hand over their family jewelry. The response to the KBS campaign was, by essentially every measure of subsequent 20th-century civic mobilisation, substantially unprecedented. On the first day of the campaign, 5 January 1998, approximately 44,748 separate consignments of gold were received at the six participating banks, totalling approximately 3,314 kilograms. Peak …