Peril of informal economy

January 25th, 2008 Jun Sok Huhh Posted in news |

RMT Middlemen in Korea is generally trustful. Their system of transactions has been well operating for last 4 years, and the criminal cases around RMT has been noticeably decreasing since they have been in the game.

But, what about the moral hazard of middleman himself? This is one of classical problems in economics. "Who watch the watchman?" Moreover, recently the business of RMT mediation slides into stagnation. In Korea, this resulted from continual decline of Lineage series–Lineage I and II might consist of 60%+ market share in Korean unsanctioned (secondary) RMT market–, social and governmental pressure against RMT, and changing in strategy of publishers from the fix-fee based to micro-transactions.

A Korean news article (written in Korean language) reported that a staff of ItemBay, the top middleman in Korea, was arrested for appropriating the account of a customer in illegal way. News said that he made around 45 USD for this case, but is now suspected to commit similar crimes for many other cases.

This act of crime might be just an exceptional episode. Actaully, It may not a big deal. However, what if the trustfulness of middleman be put on the test? When the trust of a bank be on the doubt, bank-run would precipitates and system collapses. The time horizon of RMT mediation business might not be so long enough to be careful about their trust for ever. Hypothetically, when the ending time comes sooner or later, what happen to huge RMT secondary economy?