Heiress Sentenced to One Year on Nut-Rage Charges

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Justice was swift for Cho Hyun-ah, the now-former VP of Korean Air Lines who went first-class crazy after being offered macadamia nuts in a bag instead of on a dish, a service faux pas in clear violation of the airline's policy. Cho became so infuriated by the incident that she insisted the plane return to the gate and ordered the offending flight attendant to get off.

This rightfully led to harsh criticism of Cho, her family, and the whole phenomenon of family-controlled business conglomerates known as chaebol. According to the Associated Press, which compiled this helpful summary of the case, regular non-chaebol-owning Koreans are fed up with people like the Cho family, who are said to run their businesses like feudal empires. (That is, they mistreat the serfs.)

That's bad, but it still seems odd that it resulted in actual jail time. And it turns out that the charges did not involve serf mistreatment or breaching the feudal contract, but rather our good friend the War on Terror. Cho was convicted of violating an aviation security law that prohibits "forcing an aircraft to deviate from its planned route." Which she technically sort of did by telling the pilot to go back to the gate, but I assume the law is not intended to cover this particular situation.

In any event, the AP suggested that nobody in South Korea is losing any sleep about Cho's sentence. "Personally, I think the one-year sentence was a bit short," it quoted a 24-year-old as saying. "I think there will be no improvement in the service industry working environment if conglomerates continue to treat people like this." And it's true—if they keep treating people the same way, there will be no improvement in the way they treat those people. There is no denying that.