Owner Management Crisis

Cho Hyun-ah, former vice president of Korea Airlines.
Cho Hyun-ah, former vice president of Korea Airlines.

 

Talk about the Korean Air scandal surrounding its former vice president Cho Hyun-ah is spreading like wildfire. The company tried to calm the controversy by means of a public apology by Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho. But the victimized cabin manager and a passenger have testified about Cho Hyun-ah's verbal abuse and violence, and the company’s attempt to conceal the case and manage public opinion is working more and more against the conglomerate.

The cabin manager, Park Chang-jin, said at a press interview that Cho Hyun-ah forced him to kneel down, insulted him, and repeatedly hit him on the back of his hand with a document file case. “After returning to Korea, Korean Air employees came to me day after day, telling me to testify that I was the one who was not aware of the customer service manual and make her angry, she never swore, and I got off the airplane myself,” Mr. Park added. A passenger on the flight also revealed, “The company asked me to say that it made an apology to me.”

The former vice president was investigated by the prosecutor's office on Dec. 12. If the cabin manager’s and passenger’s testimonies are found to be true, Ms. Cho and several Korean Air employees are predicted to be charged with destruction of evidence, subornation of perjury allegations, and the like.

Korean Air Senior Managing Director Cho Won-tae, who is the younger brother of the vice president, has had his name frequently bandied about, too. Nine years ago, he was booked on a charge of swearing and beating a lady in her 70s while driving his car. Seven years later, he verbally abused a civic organization, criticizing the management of Inha University.

Industry experts are pointing out that this is the biggest crisis for Korean Air since its accident in Guam in 1997, in which 225 people lost their lives, and the similar landing accident in Shanghai in 1999. At that time, the late former President Kim Dae-jung criticized the airline company for the owner’s excessive influence. The late former founder and Chairman Cho Joong-hoon had to resign, and then-President Cho Yang-ho had to step back from the front lines, before being arrested for tax evasion.

In the meantime, Korean Air was picked as the most coveted company among job-seeking college graduates in a survey conducted in June this year, chosen by 7.1 percent of the 1,106 respondents, to beat Samsung Electronics for the first time in 10 years by a margin of 1.2 percentage points. The respondents mentioned good employee benefits as their reason, but job placement website Incruit, which carried out the survey, said that the company’s human-centered marketing appealed to them.

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