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:
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.
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?
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]
I own a Roomba and I love what it does maintaining the cleanliness of the floors. However, don’t blame the robot vacuum cleaner when when you are stupid enough to do this:
Not the first time modern technology has clashed with age-old traditions, perhaps, but a South Korean woman was lucky to escape relatively unscathed after her household gadget tried to devour her mane.
Mrs. Ryu set her automatic robotic vacuum cleaner to diligently do its job last week, but was rudely awoken when the machine mistook her hair for some filth left laying around on the floor.
Ryu, 52, from Changwon City, southeast of Seoul, made the mistake of laying down for a nap on the floor – common practice in many parts of Asia – while simultaneously employing the help of her vacuu-bot.
Then the basketball-sized machine came across the ends of Ryu’s hair, it quickly started diligently sucking it up. [CBS News]
You can read more at the link, but I don’t know what is sillier, the fact her hair got caught in the vacuum or she had to call emergency services to get her hair out of it.
I understand how these families members are upset, but the sinking of the fishing boat off the coast of Russia that resulted in 53 people dead or missing is not going to get much attention in Korea because the vast majority of the people who died were foreigners. Plus it happened so far out at sea where there was no news cameras compared to the Sewol ferry boat tragedy:
On a cold afternoon last month, a handful of demonstrators carried signs along a road in downtown Seoul, attracting little attention.
The lack of interest was troubling for the small group, whose loved ones disappeared on Dec. 1 when the Korean-owned trawler Oryong 501 sank in the Bering Sea off the coast of Russia.
Six Koreans were confirmed dead in the sinking of the 1,753-ton vessel; five others remain unaccounted for. In all, 27 men, including Filipinos and Indonesians, have been confirmed dead and 26 are listed as missing.
Some of the Korean family members want the owner of the ship, Sajo Group, held accountable, saying the company sent out a non-seaworthy boat and is evading its responsibilities. They also want the government to apologize for what they believe was lax monitoring of the firm.
“We demand that Sajo Group be punished for letting a malfunctioning fishing boat go out to sea; for an apology from the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries; and a pledge that the ministry will properly supervise future ocean operations,” said Ko Jang-un, a representative for the families, whose brother has been confirmed dead.
Ma Sun-sook, who also lost her brother, said, “You can’t call it an accident if the sinking of the vessel was predictable.” [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but the boat took on water during a bad storm and a bad water pump resulted in the boat not being able to extract the water and it sunk. It had been known for months that the boat had a bad pump. It seems to me the company is to blame more so than government regulators.
