I asked a Korean speaking colleague about this situation and he informed me of some news reported in the Korean press but which I didn't see in the international press.

The guy was the son of the chairman of a mid-sized Korean company, and he was traveling to Vietnam on business. When he arrived in Incheon, he was supposedly too drunk to be questioned, so he was sent home. Yes, you heard that right, sent home! And no further news reports, so it sounds as if there will be no action taken against him. Korean Air reported that the flight attendants did their job according to the book, and there was nothing wrong with their performance.

My take on this is first of all KE should be totally ashamed of how they handled the situation. They're response is really appalling. I don't at all mean to criticize the flight attendants, because by KE's own admission, they followed the rule book. But given what happened, and that people on the flight were attacked and injured by the rogue passenger, and even the passengers who weren't injured still had to endure this for the length of the flight. Yet KE thinks they did nothing wrong. Very clearly to me, their rules are totally inadequate, and they should have immediately issued an apology and a statement that they will review their policy and make changes so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. But nothing of the sort was done. Rather they tried to make it sound as if they did all they could and their procedures are totally proper. Absolute BS coming out of KE's PR department. Enough to make me never want to flight this two-bit airline again.

But what's even more disturbing is that evidently no action will be taken against the rogue passenger. I enjoy Korea and Korean culture, but I find this to be completely unacceptable. If the same thing happened in any western country, the passenger would have been looking at serious jail time. The message KE and the Korean government are sending is, "Be as obnoxious on a KE flight into Korea as you want. If you're lucky, you might get a lot of physical contact with some beautiful flight attendants, and they'll even tie you up. But once you land, nothing will happen to you, and you can go about your business."

Now what if instead of the passenger being drunk, he was a terrorist? And due to KE's inadequate policies, he couldn't be contained, and as a result caused a serious incident with the plane? Is KE still not going to accept responsibility? What if a drunk rogue passenger ended up killing another passenger? Is KE and the Korean government going to say, "that's ok, because he was drunk"? It blows my mind how completely backwards KE and the Korean government are in this respect. I seriously hope some western countries will take a hard look at KE and the Korean government and consider banning KE flights to their country, being they very obviously have no clue about how to handle dangerous situations.

Sorry for the rant. This whole situation really upset me.