South Korea Toughens Penalties For In Flight Violence
The next time someone gets drunk and violent on an airplane there are now tougher laws for South Korean authorities to punish them with:
The government is toughening penalties for violent behavior on passenger planes.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on Thursday said the National Assembly passed a revision to aviation laws whereby violent passengers who threaten flight safety now face up to 10 years in prison, and five years even when their actions do not endanger a flight.
The revision, which mostly doubles the old penalties, came after a high-profile incident in December last year, when a drunk passenger went on a rampage on a Korean Air flight that carried 80s crooner Richard Marx and therefore made international headlines. [Chosun Ilbo]
You can read more at the link.
This really annoys me, yeah I know it’s the RoK and most of their laws are retahded but seriously? Has this type of thing happened so much and resulted in things so horrible that they need to double the penalty?
This comes from the line of thought that a law is meant to prevent 100% said thing from happening and any violation of the law should result in increasing the penalty.
Under the old penalty how is 5 years in prison for “threatening flight safety” (which we all know was/is/will be so incredibly vaguely interpreted) not enough? 5 years of your life taken and most likely the rest ruined? 2.5y just for I dunno pissing off the flight crew? They don’t really define the standard… So now just for crossing some unknown line you’ll get 5 years… 5. GTFO.
Improper application of laws by officials who think they “have to do something” every time something happens result in oppressive environments that leave people ignorant of what their rights should be. I suspect lack of actually having people complete the sentence (if sentenced at all) is also to blame.
All they need is an air marshall. Or a large flight attendant hired for that purpose.