Via a reader tip comes this news that the daughter of the Chairman of Korean Air decided to have a airplane returned to the gate to boot a stewardess she was unhappy with:
The daughter of Korean Air Lines Co. Chairman Cho Yang Ho ordered a plane back to the gate so she could remove a crew member who gave an incorrect answer to a question on how to serve macadamia nuts, the airline said.
Heather Cho, 40, a vice president of the airline, ordered the head of the service crew on Flight 86 from New York to Seoul to deplane after an attendant earlier had served Cho macadamia nuts without asking, the carrier said. Cho then summoned the purser to ask a question about the airline’s policy on serving nuts. Cho ordered the man to leave the plane when he couldn’t answer. Under the carrier’s rules, passengers must be asked first before serving.
The purser didn’t know the company’s procedures and “kept on making up lies and excuses,” Korean Air said in a separate statement late yesterday.
The aircraft had already left the gate at John F. Kennedy International Airport for takeoff on Dec. 5. It took no more than 2 minutes to return to the gate to deplane the crew member, according to the airline. The flight was 11 minutes late when it arrived in Seoul on Dec. 6.
Korean Air in its statement late yesterday apologized to passengers for the inconvenience the incident caused. It noted the plane was less than 10 meters from the gate at JFK when the decision to return was made. [BusinessWeek]
You can read more at the link, but I can understand her unhappiness because serving nuts for example to a kid without asking could cause an allergic reaction and open the airline to a lawsuit. So I understand where she is coming from, but with that said what gives her the right to turn around a plane? Shouldn’t the pilots due to an emergency be the ones to make that decision? I would not classify this as an emergency and just something that the airline could of took care when the plane arrived back in Korea.
Representative Royce is pretty much just stating reality and hopefully one day the Japanese will accept this reality:
The chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee said “Dokdo” is the right name to refer to South Korea’s easternmost islets, rejecting Japan’s long-running claims that the East Sea islets are its own.
“It’s another one of those issues where we have to understand history and what abuses occurred because it is relevant to our understanding today,” Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency earlier this week. “The proper name is Dokdo island.”
Japan’s claims to Dokdo have long been a key thorn in relations between Seoul and Tokyo, along with other issues stemming from Tokyo’s 1910-45 colonial rule, such as Japan’s enslavement of Korean women as sex slaves for its troops.
South Korea has rejected Japan’s claims over Dokdo as nonsense because the country regained independence from colonial rule and reclaimed sovereignty over its territory, including Dokdo and many other islands around the Korean Peninsula.
Seoul has been keeping a small police detachment on Dokdo since 1954.
It is considered unusual for the U.S. House Foreign Affairs committee chief to openly reject Japan’s claims to the islets. The U.S. government has not taken any side on the issue, leaving the matter to Seoul and Tokyo to sort out.
Royce, who has been reelected the committee’s chairman for the incoming Congress, is considered one of the “pro-Korean” U.S. lawmakers. He has led a series of legislation and resolutions on issues related to South and North Korea. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but Representative Royce has also been pushing the Japanese to accept the human rights abuses that happened in regards to the comfort women as well.
Has anyone read this guy’s books and if so is it worth reading? The Koreans apparently think so:
Political philosopher Michael Sandel is something of a rock star in South Korea, where he has spoken before 15,000 people in a packed amphitheater and thrown out the first pitch at a professional baseball game.
Now, the Harvard University professor can add honorary citizen of Seoul to his list of credentials.
On Friday, Mayor Park Won-soon made it official at a ceremony in which Mr. Sandel spoke before 500 municipal workers on the topic of “Justice, Markets and the Good Society.”
That’s the latest spinoff of an intellectual thread that Mr. Sandel has turned into a popular following, built around his well-known “Justice” undergraduate class at Harvard. The “Justice” class has been broadcast online and on public television and spun out in recent years into a widely-translated best-selling book, as well as a television and radio series.
The Korean translations of his books have been big hits in South Korea, and helped catapult him to celebrity status when he came through town in 2012 for a book tour. [The Wall Street Journal – Korea Real Time]
Here is another article that shows how discrimination against foreign English teachers in Korea is quite common:
Sean Jones was on his way for a job interview last week in Seoul and received a disturbing text message that reads “Hey Sean. Sorry they just told me they actually want a white teacher.”
“I was on my way to the interview when I received a text message from my recruiter stating that they only want a white teacher,” Sean told The Korea Observer.
“Regardless of my two plus years of experience, TEFL certification, great references and the ability to speak intermediate Korean, I was turned down before even given an opportunity to speak with them.”
To add insult to injury, the 30-year-old American from Oklahoma experienced racial discrimination again two days after the incident.
This time he received a facebook message that reads, “I am sorry. I just found out today that my school is one of ones that won’t hire black people.” [Korea Observer]
You can read more at the link, but to show that discrimination in Korea isn’t always about skin color either in the past people have been denied English teaching jobs due to accents and even perceptions of heavy drinking.
Students of Whispering Pines School wearing traditional Korean clothing hold South Korea’s national flag during a ceremony held at the private school near New York on Dec. 4, 2014, to celebrate the Korean Education Center of New York’s contribution to its scholarships. A total of 124 of the school’s students are learning Korean as their second foreign language. (Yonhap)
Park Hyun-jung, president and CEO of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, is under fire over allegations that she sexually harassed employees, verbally assaulted them and abused her power in hiring and promotion decisions.
Insiders of the Seoul-government funded orchestra say Park tried to touch a male employee’s genital area in October last year by pulling him by his necktie at a public dinner gathering after drinking an excessive amount of alcohol.
“From the look of you, I think you will do well as a (bar) hostess,” she was also quoted as saying to a female employee during a meeting.
A petition filed against her reveals that Park told two other female employees at the meeting that they should serve important guests by sitting next to them and doing the duty of bar girls. [Korea Observer]
Good news out there for all you single ROK Heads, via the Marmot’s Hole comes news that Kim Yu-na has dumped her hockey player boyfriend:
South Korean figure skating queen Kim Yuna, 24, and ice hockey player Kim Won-jung, 31, have broken up, Korean media reported Tuesday.
Sources said they are unsure when the pair separated.
In August, Sgt. Kim Won-jung, while serving his mandatory military service as an athlete in the military corps, made headlineswhen he sustained leg injuries after getting in a car accident following a visit to a massage parlor. [Korea Times]
Here are the details of what Kim Won-jung did to get dumped by Kim Yu-na:
Three ice hockey national team members on active military duty, including the sergeant known to be South Korea’s figure skating icon Kim Yuna’s boyfriend, were discovered to have left their barracks without permission and failed to report a car crash they were involved in, the defense ministry said Wednesday.
On June 27, the three draftees — two sergeants, surnamed Lee and Kim, and a corporal, surnamed Lee — left their training camp in Ilsan, just north of Seoul, in a car owned by one of the sergeants, and went to a massage parlor.
On their way back to the hotel some two hours later, their car was hit by a civilian vehicle, which left sergeant Kim with injuries requiring six weeks of medical treatment and the two with minor bruises, according to the ministry.
Kim reportedly suffered ligament damage on his right knee. [The Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but this just seems like one of those only in Korea stories.
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