Originally Posted by ethernal

Of course a 5 night stay wouldn't. But what about my scenario? I fly LAX-ICN, land at 4 AM, attend my meeting late morning, and then head back to ICN in order to catch the 4 PM SFO flight to be there the next morning to do a meeting in San Francisco. This is a perfectly valid situation. I've done something similar before (TPAC with same-day turnaround for a critical workshop with short notice - landed at 5 AM, left at 8 PM that same day).

Note that KE will not ticket this itinerary unless I include a Delta leg (e.g., via SEA). I cannot take both the KE non-stop leg to ICN and the ICN-SFO leg on the same ticket. They are happy to ticket me LAX-ICN-LAX on a similar (indeed shorter stopover - about 10 vs 12 hours), but not LAX-ICN-SFO.

So no, you are wrong. KE at least clearly believes that LAX-ICN-meeting-ICN-SFO is cabotage. I am being blocked from buying a perfectly valid itinerary that best fits my needs (DL does not fly nonstop to SFO obviously, but KE does) because of unintended spillover effects from ridiculous anti-competitive laws.