South Korean toilet ban note on jet ignites outrage

SEOUL: KLM, the Dutch arm of Air France KLM, offered a public apology yesterday after a crew member sparked outrage on social media by posting a sign in Korean saying passengers on a recent flight were not allowed to use a toilet because of the new coronavirus.

Photos of the handwritten sign saying “lavatory for crew members only” went viral in South Korea earlier week after a passenger on a 10-hour flight from Amsterdam to Seoul’s Incheon airport on Monday shared the images on the internet.

The passenger accused KLM of discriminating against South Korean passengers because the sign was only in Korean.

“Dear KLM... Today, you made it quite clear that you discriminate against race. Using Corona Virus as an excuse. You owe my friend and Korea a HUGE apology,” wrote one Twitter user, whose posts in English and Korean about the incident gathered thousands of retweets and likes.

The hashtag BoycottKLM was trending on Korean Twitter.

Yesterday, executives with KLM bowed as they publicly apologised at a news conference held in the South Korean capital Seoul, saying they take allegations of discrimination “very seriously” and promising to prevent it from happening again.

“This is a human mistake, and we don’t take it lightly,” said Guillaume Glass, an Air France-KLM regional general manager. “We are deeply sorry that this was viewed as discrimination, which was absolutely not the intention of the crew.”

The crew said using only Korean on the sign was simply an oversight. An English notice was added after passengers complained, Mr Glass said.

It is not KLM policy to reserve lavatories for use by crew members only, he added.

On Wednesday, South Korea’s transportation ministry released a statement warning KLM over its “discriminatory measures” and calling on the company to ensure that incidents such as these never happen again.

At a meeting scheduled for yesterday, Dutch Ambassador Joanne Doornewaard expressed regrets over the incident to Transportation Minister Kim Hyun-mee, a ministry official said in a statement.