Sooo, You Want to Fly for Korean Airlines Do You?

[Keylime]

Just talking with a fellow aviator who flies for Korean Airlines. He was telling me about an incident which occurred back on December 1, 2011. Seems an expat captain on a B777-300ER from ICN-BKK was assaulted by a Korean engineer in Bangkok.
As the story goes, after landing in Bangkok the captain chose to shutdown an engine during taxi to the gate as the aircraft was rather light weight and was requiring constant braking to maintain a safe taxi speed because of the residual thrust of the GE90 engines. (If you haven't flown this aircraft the GE engines put out a lot of thrust even at idle) Supposedly, KAL like many airlines has advisory pages on each airport (called K-pages, how original). The advisory for BKK "recommends"(not mandatory, not procedure) leaving both engines running taxiing to the gate as there is a slight upslope and to prevent jet blast damage. This is normal if you are flying some of the 777's with the less powerful Pratt & Whitney engines. The aircraft was taxied to the gate and parked with the remaining engine at idle.
After the passengers had disembarked, the engineer came on the aircraft and started yelling at the first officer in Korean. The captain was standing in the cockpit doorway watching this situation going on in first class. Finally, he asked what was going on and the engineer came up to him and started yelling at him in poor, broken English "you violate procedure, you violate Jeppesen, you shutdown engine". The captain told him to get out of his face and stop yelling. Then the engineer, put his hands on the captain and told him to get out of his way. The captain told him to back off and reached for the engineer's ID attached to his pocket. The engineer then shoved the captain and he fell back into the cockpit. In the ensuing struggle, the engineer grabbed the captain from behind and grabbed his left arm and pulled him around. As a result of this, the captain has a shoulder injury and has been unable to return to work for two months. He is undergoing medical treatment. KAL has stopped his pay. As of this posting, no punishment for the engineer. Probably has been promoted and given a pay raise for assaulting a foreigner.
According to my contact, the disrespect toward foreigners by the korean employees continues to escalate. First officers tell captains they don't have to do what they ask them to do because they are foreigners. Cabin crew and Pursers disregard captain's authority. Etc. etc. Meanwhile KAL continues to have incident after incident from ATC violations to nearly running aircraft out of gas, and that is what we know about.
Up until this point the abuse has been mostly verbal. This is a whole new escalation. He told me this attitude permeates Korean Airlines from the top management all the way to the lowest level. The system is totally dysfunctional. You have to need a job awfully bad to put up with this unprofessional garbage. Buyer beware.