Korean Air ‘rage’ sisters to depart as father apologizes
Two Korean Air heiresses will leave management positions with the family-run conglomerate after abuse of an employee by one of them, the second incident of its kind that has produced widespread backlash.
Korean Air chairman Cho Yang-ho issued a statement apologizing for his daughters’ behavior and said they would both be resigning, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Cho Hyun-ah, recently named president of the airline’s hotel business and her younger sister, Cho Hyun-min, a Korean Air senior executive, will be stripped of all their responsibilities, according to Yonhap News Agency.
Cho Hyun-ah, also known as Heather Cho, rose to infamy in 2014 after an incident at John F. Kennedy International Airport that has since been dubbed “nut rage.”
She was a Korean Air vice president at the time and was sitting in first class aboard a Korean Air flight bound for Seoul when she was given macadamia nuts in an unopened package rather than on a plate, as per the airline’s rules. Cho reportedly flew into a rage over the nuts, verbally abusing flight staff and forcing them to apologize on their knees. She then ordered the plane — already taxiing and carrying 250 passengers — to return to the gate and had the offending flight attendants ejected.
In the wake of “nut rage,” Cho Hyun-ah was fired by her father and charged with obstructing aviation safety. She was sentenced to a year in prison, but only served a few months before returning to the company to be president of its hotel business, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Her younger sister, Cho Hyun-min, who also goes by Emily Cho, followed in her footsteps last month when she allegedly verbally abused and threw water at an employee of the airline’s advertising agency during a business meeting, Yonhap reported. The Korea Times reported that she was “enraged” ad the employee’s work performance. She denied throwing water but acknowledged shoving the employee, the BBC reported.
Cho Hyun-min publicly apologized for the fracas, saying her behavior was “foolish and reckless.” The incident is being called “water rage.”
The apologies have done little to quell outrage, with many seeing the recent incident as another example of leaders of powerful family-run companies, also known as chaebol, acting with unchecked power.