It is going to be interesting to see if this law gets passed:
In this Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2014 photo, Cho Hyun-ah, center, former vice president of Korean Air Lines, is escorted by court officials as she leaves for Seoul Western District Prosecutors Office at the Seoul Western District Court Office in Seoul, South Korea. A Seoul court is expected to decide Tuesday whether to issue an arrest warrant for Cho, who resigned as vice president at the airline earlier this month amid mounting public criticism over the incident that she forced a flight to return over a bag of macadamia nuts and a current executive for attempts to cover up the “nut rage” case. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Resentment has mounted so much in South Korea against what has come to be known as “gabjil”, high-handedness by the rich and powerful, that parliamentarians are proposing legislation to punish some of the worst abuses.
A bill to be presented in the national assembly this month is formally called the “Conglomerates Ethical Management Special Law” but has been nick-named the Cho Hyun-ah law.
Cho, also known as Heather Cho, is the daughter of the chairman of Korean Air Lines and was sentenced last week to a year in prison for an outburst on a Korean Air plane while on the ground in New York. It was considered a severe sentence by some legal experts.
The bill proposes to ban members of the powerful business families known as chaebol from working at their companies for at least five years if convicted of a crime. In earlier cases, some high-profile offenders were pardoned, serving little or no jail time, although recently-convicted chaebol executives have found it harder to avoid prison. [Reuters]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if it is even Constitutional in Korea to make special laws that focus on particular individual families?
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.
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:
Members of the media try to get pictures of a bus carrying Cho Hyun-ah, the former vice president of Korean Air Line Co., through the windows of the Seoul Western District Court after her trial in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015. A Seoul court on Thursday sentenced Cho to a year in prison for aviation law violations that stemmed from her inflight tantrum over how she was served macadamia nuts.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
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.
Here is an interesting article from Bloomberg that explains why the Korean media does not actively investigate chaebol and when major incidents do happen they are quick to forget about them:
Cho Hyun-ah, Korean Air’s vice president responsible for cabin service, and the oldest child of Korean Air chairman Cho Yang-ho, answers question in Incheon, South Korea in September 2014. Yonhap/AP
It’s the rare scandal that links air rage, corruption and the fate of the world’s 14th biggest economy. The Cho Hyun-ah kerfuffle dominating South Korean news media offers all this and perhaps more: a chance to right a political system that’s veered off course.
The news media pounced on the delicious tale of Cho’s freakout, on a Dec. 5 New York-to-Seoul flight, over the manner in which she was served her macadamia nuts. Cho figured her status as daughter of Korean Air’s chairman entitled her to demand that Flight 86 return to the gate to toss off a crew member who didn’t pay her sufficient homage. The 40-year-old has since been indicted for obstructing aviation safety (she’s also being investigated for colluding with transportation officials).
News commentators are now slamming the sense of privilege felt by families running Korea’s corporate giants, or chaebol. Indeed, Cho’s tantrum demonstrated, in a nutshell, how nepotism and clubby ties between government and industry hold back the economy.
But why did it take Cho’s nut-rage to get reporters on the case? Something similar happened last April with the sinking of the Sewol, in which more than 300 people (most of them school kids) died. The ferry was operated by chaebol Chonghaejin Marine, a fact that was harnessed to explore how cronyism and the revolving-door between regulators, bureaucrats and the private sector put lives at risk. This fit a disturbing pattern. When a spectacular incident makes global headlines, journalists feel compelled to investigate Korea’s chaebol problem. When the dust settles, they move on. Rather than respond only to periodic public outrage, journalists should keep a steady watch on the issue.
Two years ago, Park Geun-hye rode a wave of discontent into South Korea’s presidential Blue House. Many blame the widening gap between rich and poor on the dominance of the chaebol, with their unseemly penchant for tax-evasion, sibling battles over assets and extreme concentration of national wealth. Just five companies generate roughly two-thirds of South Korea’s gross domestic product. This outsized influence stifles small-and- medium-size companies. It kills any chance a startup might have to introduce game-changing products and create new jobs. Park’s plan to rein in the chaebol is off to a slow start, and media elites share in the blame.
The chaebol are major advertisers with deep pockets and, like Japan’s vast power industry or America’s military- industrial complex, they are adept at using their brawn to muzzle criticism. In his explosive 2010 book “Think Samsung,” that company’s former in-house counsel Kim Yong-chul detailed how family-owned conglomerates allegedly used bribes and intimidation to “lord over” the government and the media. Kim says that when he first approached local news outlets with the story, he found no takers. [Bloomberg]
You can read the rest at the link, but I think with the rise of alternative media it is getting harder for the chaebol to cover up their transgressions. With that said I would be surprised to see anything change anytime soon.
