Month: February 2015

The Korean Air heiress at the center of the Nut Rage case is not going down without a fight:

The eldest daughter of Korean Air Lines Co.’s chairman on Friday appealed a court decision that found her guilty of violating air safety and other laws, court officials said.

Cho Hyun-ah, former vice president of the nation’s top carrier, was convicted a day earlier of changing the planned route of a flight, intimidating and assaulting a flight attendant, and obstructing the business of the airline.

She was sentenced to one year in jail despite her repeated apologies to the judges, which she hoped would earn her a suspended jail term.

On Dec. 5, Cho ordered a senior crew member off the Korean Air flight headed to Incheon from New York because of the way she was served nuts. The plane had already been taxiing with 250 passengers on board. She said she was upset that her macadamia nuts were provided in an unopened packet rather than on a plate, which, according to the then vice president of cabin service, violated the proper nut-serving protocol.

The Seoul Western District Court in charge of the case said Cho’s attorney submitted an appeal Friday afternoon.

“The decision misconstrued facts and the principle of aviation law,” attorney Seo Chang-hui said. “We also believe the sentence is unjustified.”  [Yonhap]

It will be interesting to see how this turns out.  Maybe this is what was planned all along, convict her for one year then appeal, and then wait for the media attention to die down.  Once the media attention dies down quietly let her win the appeal and release her for time served.

Reuters Seoul correspondent and author James Pearson to talk about capitalism in North Korea http://t.co/VdCgRNCE6D #NorthKorea @pearswick

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) February 11, 2015

South Korean and Thai Marines hold a joint search drill as part of the Cobra Gold 2015 at a Thai Marine training center in Thailand on Feb. 11, 2015. (Photo courtesy of Marine Corps) (Yonhap)

Via a reader tip comes this news that sentence for Heather Cho who was at the center of the Nut Rage case has been announced:

An onboard tantrum dubbed “nut rage” culminated Thursday in a one-year prison sentence for Korean Air heiress Cho Hyun-ah, a humiliating rebuke that only partially quelled public outrage at the excesses of South Korea’s business elite.

Cho, the daughter of Korean Air’s chairman, achieved worldwide notoriety after she ordered the chief flight attendant off a Dec. 5 flight, forcing it to return to the gate at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.

Head of cabin service at the time of the incident, Cho was angered she had been offered macadamia nuts in a bag instead of on a dish. A heated and physical confrontation with members of the crew in first class ensued.

A Seoul court said Cho, 40, was guilty of forcing a flight to change its route, obstructing the flight’s captain in the performance of his duties, forcing a crew member off a plane and assaulting a crew member. It found her not guilty of interfering with a transport ministry investigation into the incident. Cho pleaded not guilty and prosecutors had called for three years in prison.

Cho, in custody since Dec. 30, wiped away tears with a tissue as a letter expressing her remorse was read to the court by head judge Oh Seong-woo.

It included details about how Cho, one of the richest women in South Korea who regularly flew first class, was adjusting to the basic conditions in prison and reflecting on her life. “I know my faults and I’m very sorry,” Cho said in her letter.  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link, but I am surprised she received that much time in prison.  Usually you see these business tycoons get rolled into the court in wheelchairs claim they are sick, show their remorse, and then receive suspended sentences.  Maybe Cho should have come to court in a wheelchair because by Korean business tycoon standards she got slammed pretty good for what she did.  This just goes to show what a nerve she struck with the Korean public that no one in the legal or political circles were willing to stick their necks out to help her.  With that all said, with time served and good behavior she will likely be quietly released from prison in a few months.

This article about military retirements hits on one of the main reasons for the current system that I have highlighted in the past, military retirement is basically receiving the second half of your pay in the military:

To an outsider, military pensions sound ridiculous; you can put in 20 years starting in your late teens or early 20s and “retire” at the time when most people are hitting their peak earning years. Obviously, that’s a very expensive benefit for the government to provide. Should we ratchet up the retirement age? Some economists think we should.

People supporting the status quo will probably argue that the military is more physically demanding than most jobs, and therefore you have to expect people to retire earlier. But the pension is available to everyone in the military, not just infantrymen. Moreover, it is disproportionately used by officers, not enlisted men, and by the time they have 20 years in, officers are spending a lot less time hauling heavy things and running around in the mud.

But there’s another problem with rejiggering the Army’s pension schedule, and that’s the way it interacts with the “up or out” system that the military uses for officers’ careers. Basically, officers who don’t get selected for promotion get fired.

The military is not the only institution that uses this method. It’s also popular with consultancies, law firms and investment banks. That system is archaic and barbaric, and whatever it gains you in reduced payroll costs, it loses you in accumulated human capital, and it also earns you a backstabbing corporate culture.

Of course, no one asked me, and I expect that those sorts of firms will continue to use up-or-out pyramids for the foreseeable future. But what do all these firms have in common with each other, and not with the military?

They pay really well. The senior people who survived the tournament get paid even better, of course. But even the entry-level jobs pay better than most of the alternatives.

The opposite is true in the military. It pays badly in the beginning and it pays badly at the end, relative to what those folks could have been making if they’d been steadily moving up through the ranks in a normal industry.  [Bloomberg]

You can read more at the link, but the article goes on to discuss other issues such as constant moves and spouses being unable to start careers which is very different from civilian counterparts.  The article than says that if the government wants to do away with the defined benefit pension than it needs to be prepared to pay more up front or watch the quality of military careerists decline.

I don’t think the Chinese really mind the North Koreans having a few nukes for regime security, but the brinkmanship and continual threats against neighboring countries and the lack of Chinese style economic reforms is what I think is really causing the Chinese to snub Kim Jong-un:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may not be able to visit China on his first foreign trip if there is no progress in diplomatic efforts to persuade the North to give up its nuclear ambitions, South Korea’s ambassador to China said Wednesday.

Amb. Kwon Young-se was also cautious when talking about the possibility of a visit by Kim to Russia in May, saying it is too early to conclude that Kim’s trip to Russia would take place.

Kim took the helm of the authoritarian state in late 2011 after his father, Kim Jong-il, died. China is North Korea’s ideological ally and economic lifeline, but their political ties remain strained, particularly after the North’s third nuclear test in early 2013.

Russia has said that Kim would be among those attending the May 9th ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

“I believe that a visit by Kim Jong-un to China is connected to the issue of denuclearization,” Kwon told Yonhap News Agency in an interview.

“From the perspective of China, there is a clear aspect that it would be burdensome to conduct a highest-level exchange with North Korea at a time when North Korea shows no progress in the nuclear issue,” Kwon said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but with that all said the Chinese are not about to abandon the regime to collapse either.  They are just not providing as much to the regime as before and the regime may think buddying up to Putin may make up for the economic aid they have lost from the Chinese.

It seems that McDonald’s workers in South Korea are also motivated to get themselves replaced by machines:

The leader of protests against McDonald’s “culture of exploitation” of young part-time workers vowed Monday to continue fighting until the firm corrects its practices.

“If the company doesn’t respond to our demands, we will continue to raise our voice on the streets,” Lee Hae-jung, secretary general of the Arbeit Workers Union (AWU), told The Korea Times. “After our protest on Friday, we are waiting for a response from McDonald’s. Another protest will be held.”

A group of part-time workers occupied a McDonald’s outlet in Shinchon, near Yonsei University, Saturday, to demand “higher wages, fair working conditions and union activities within the company.”

“We have received many favorable reactions since then, especially from those who work at other fast-food restaurants,” Lee said. “Many showed empathy when we said it is unfair that most of employees at one of the world’s biggest companies eke out a living on minimum wage.”  [Korea Times]

In response, McDonald’s said it did not break any laws in hiring and managing its employees.

“What the union is saying is a complete distortion. McDonald’s clearly abides by the Labor Law,” the company said.

In December, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board’s Office of the General Counsel also filed complaints against McDonald’s, accusing it of labor violations.

Complaints were filed in 78 cases, claiming that McDonald’s workers in the U.S. were fired or intimidated for participating in union organizing and in a national protest movement calling for higher wages.

Most McDonald’s workers in Korea earn a minimum hourly wage of 5,580 won ($5.10). Meanwhile, the company had a profit of $5.5 billion on sales of $27.5 billion in 2012.

The AWU wants a wage increase to 10,000 won an hour.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I have already seen some restaurants experimenting with touch screen ordering.  How hard would it be for McDonald’s to put up touch screens for customers to order from and then a worker brings the food out to them?

The Future of South Korea’s Welfare System http://t.co/Q7ybRZryT9

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) February 10, 2015

This KCNA photo released on Feb. 5, 2015, shows North Korean students marching on a mountain road during a nationwide march to celebrate Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule. (No sale outside of South Korea) (KCNA-Yonhap)

A huge pileup due to foggy weather on the bridge leading from Incheon International Airport to Seoul has killed two people and injured dozens more:

Two people were killed and more than 60 others were injured on Wednesday as more than 100 vehicles piled up on a bridge near Incheon International Airport in foggy weather, police said.

The collision took place at 9:34 a.m. on the Seoul-bound side of the bridge linking the western port city with an island where the airport, South Korea’s main gateway, is located.

A total of 63 people were injured and taken to nearby hospitals. Ten of them were in serious condition, while two were in critical condition, authorities said.

Of the injured, seven were Chinese, three Thai, two Vietnamese and two Filipino. The other four foreign nationals were Japanese, Russian, Bangladeshi and Swiss, respectively.

One of the two Vietnamese victims was in serious condition, firefighters said.

The bodies of the two victims have been moved to hospitals in Goyang, a northern Seoul suburb, and western Incheon, respectively, police said. They were identified only as a 51-year-old surnamed Kim and a 46-year-old surnamed Lim.

Police said a taxi in the first lane bumped another taxi in front of it into the second lane. An airport limousine bus ran into the second taxi, causing a mass collision of cars behind it.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.