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Korean Air’s Chairman Removes Daughter From Executive Posts After Nut Dustup Korean Air’s Chairman Removes Daughter From Executive Posts After Nut Dustup
(about 9 hours later)
SEOUL, South Korea — A furor in South Korea over an airline executive who ordered a jet back to the gate after a contretemps over macadamia nuts continued Friday, as the head of the airline apologized on live television and said the executive — his daughter — had been stripped of all her executive posts. SEOUL, South Korea — It looked as if things could not get worse for the South Korean airline executive mocked around the world this week for throwing a tantrum over a bag of nuts.
“Please blame me; it’s my fault,” Cho Yang-ho, the chairman of Korean Air Lines, said in front of a bank of cameras, at one point bowing deeply. Following a Korean tradition of showing public contrition when one’s children misbehave, he added, “I failed to raise her properly.” Then her father, the chairman of the airline, stripped his 40-year-old daughter, Cho Hyun-ah, of the titles she still had in the family-run conglomerate. He apologized on live television Friday for her “foolish" behavior, when she forced her plane back to the gate and then kicked off the head steward after being served macadamia nuts in their bag, rather than on a plate.
Mr. Cho’s daughter, Cho Hyun-ah, was on a Korean Air flight that had just left the gate at Kennedy International Airport on Dec. 5, bound for the South Korean city of Incheon, when she ordered it to return so the senior flight attendant could be removed. Ms. Cho had become upset when she was served macadamia nuts in the first-class section in an unopened bag, rather than on a plate. “I failed to raise her properly,” said the chairman, Cho Yang-ho, who bowed deeply and asked to take the blame, showing contrition in the traditional South Korean way when one’s child misbehaves.
On Tuesday, after the incident became public, Ms. Cho resigned as head of the airline’s in-flight services, but retained her title as vice president. On Friday, Mr. Cho said he would deprive Ms. Cho, his eldest child, of that job and her other executive posts at his sprawling conglomerate, Hanjin Group, which owns hotel, shipping and logistics businesses as well as Korean Air. As if that was not enough, the head steward on the flight spoke up after days of silence, telling Korea’s KBS-TV on Friday that Mr. Cho’s daughter had forced him to kneel down and apologize on the plane as punishment for the way one of his stewards served the nuts to passenger in first class. She later kicked the steward off the flight.
Meanwhile, sales of macadamia nuts are said to have surged. In its Twitter feed, a local retail shopping website, G Market, advertised its macadamia nuts by saying, "This is it: the famous nuts! (Macadamia).” Another online seller promised to deliver macadamia nuts “in an unopened package.” An online ad hawking macadamia nuts showed a passenger jet in the background. “You can’t imagine the humiliation I felt unless you experienced it yourself,” the steward, Park Chang-jin, said, adding that Ms. Cho called him names, hit him several times with a folder of documents and hurled it at the steward.
Prosecutors are investigating whether Ms. Cho, 40, violated South Korean aviation law, which bars passengers from acts that could endanger a plane’s safety, like shouting, using threatening language or otherwise causing a disturbance. Local news media has reported that Ms. Cho “raised hell” during the Dec. 5 incident, screaming at crew members. Prosecutors are also investigating whether Korean Air tried to cover up the episode. They raided Korean Air offices on Thursday in connection with the investigation. Ms. Cho later denied hitting Mr. Park or forcing him to kneel, making her statement as she emerged from questioning by government investigators looking into whether her actions violated aviation law. But if Mr. Park’s story bears out, it is likely to stoke already seething anger at the country’s family owned conglomerates — or chaebol — whose leaders have a reputation for imperious behavior and treating their employees like feudal subjects.
Ms. Cho herself faced about 100 reporters on Friday outside an office of the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, which is conducting its own investigation into the incident. Speaking in a barely audible whisper with her head bowed, Ms. Cho said she would apologize in person to the crew members she was accused of abusing. Forcing people to kneel in apology, a once common punishment, has, after all, fallen out of fashion in South Korea.
Public anger over the incident bears witness to a simmering hostility in South Korea over the country’s family-controlled conglomerates, known as chaebol, which dominate the economy. Widening inequality in South Korea is often blamed on the rapid expansion of the conglomerates in recent decades, and members of the families who control them are frequently accused of treating the companies’ employees like subjects. About the only good news, at least for business, came from macadamia nut purveyors who told local media that sales were surging. Some seemed to be having fun at Ms. Cho’s expense, with one telling customers online that the nuts would be delivered “in an unopened package.”
According to local news media, the scandal has jeopardized Mr. Cho’s ambitions to win a government permit to build an enormous new hotel in downtown Seoul. There have been calls online to boycott the airline, and a parody video of a Korean Air commercial (dubbing the airline “Peanut Air”) has been circulating. Anger at the nation’s chaebol has risen in recent years as many people blame widening economic inequality in South Korea on the conglomerates’ rapid expansion. The latest accusations of abuse by Ms. Cho have led already to a new chorus of critical editorials.
“In this case, we see not only a violation of an aviation law but also the imperial abuse of an owner family” the mass-circulation daily JoongAng Ilbo said in an editorial. Another editorial, in the daily Kyunghyang Shinmun, urged prosecutors to use Ms. Cho’s case as a warning to chaebol families that “act as if they were above the law.”
The newspaper also referred to other cases of what it called “depraved conduct” by chaebol families, including one in which a member of the family that controls SK Group, a telecommunications and petrochemicals conglomerate, received a suspended prison term for beating a former union activist with an aluminum bat.
In his statements to KBS, the head steward said that he had not felt able to stand up to Ms. Cho because she was “a daughter of the owner” of his company. KBS also quoted Mr. Park as claiming that Korean Air officials later tried to hush the scandal by asking him to tell investigators that he left the plane of his own will.
Korean Air had earlier accused Mr. Park of “ignoring regulations and procedures” of in-flight services and of trying to defend his crew’s mistake with “excuses and lies.” But the airline also admitted that Ms. Cho’s decision to remove him from the flight was “excessive.”
On Tuesday, after the incident on the flight bound for Incheon, South Korea, from New York’s Kennedy Airport had become public, Ms. Cho resigned as head of the airline’s in-flight services. She retained her title as vice president until Friday, however. At that point, her father said he would deprive Ms. Cho, his eldest child, of that job and her other executive posts at his sprawling conglomerate, Hanjin Group, which owns hotel, shipping and logistics businesses as well as Korean Air.
South Korean aviation law bars passengers from acts that could endanger a plane’s safety, such as shouting, using threatening language or otherwise causing a disturbance. Local media has reported that Ms. Cho “raised hell” during the Dec. 5 incident, screaming at crew members. Prosecutors are also investigating whether Korean Air tried to cover up the episode and raided the airline’s offices on Thursday in connection with the investigation.
There have been calls online to boycott the airline, and a parody video of a Korean Air commercial online had more than a half million views, and counting. The commercial called the airline “Peanut Air.”
On Friday, Ms. Cho seemed chastened by the public embarrassment. As she arrived for questioning at the offices of South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, she spoke in a barely audible whisper with her head bowed as a scrum of journalists snapped photos and thrust microphones in her face. She then said she would apologize in person to the crew members she was accused of abusing.