OK San Pedro and Kilda. It has been some 14-15 years and most of the guys have moved on. In year 1999, two friends were recruited into KAL and were undergoing line training, so called OE training together with some 3 Malaysians. Unbeknownst tothem, it was actually a sham with them being set up to be culled at the final checks. I knew this because I was close to the local Korean managing VP of flight operations who was also on the MD-11 fleet. He confided in me that a rogue group instructors and checkers who had stong ties to the KMOT ( Korean Transport Ministry ) check airmen were planning to fail all the expat trainees at the final moment as a warning to prospective recruits.
One of the expat trainees was related to a close relative and my Korean MVP friend told me that he can only helped get rid of those rogue Korean instructors and checkers if he had very very good reasons to. Basically his hands were tied due to their MOT ties.
As it so happened, a new group of Malaysian pilot recruits came for their pre-employment checks and 95% were failed!! We latched onto this to see if we can get a volunteer amongst the Malaysians to stir up the recruitment agencies to force KAL and MOT to move against those rogues. We managed to contact an earlier successful Malaysian applicant to voluntarily sent some anonymous letter to one of the failees hoping that this must come to the attention of the pilot recruitment agencies with the proviso that he leave enough clues to let the finger point to him alone ( as a sacrificial scapegoat ) should the plan go pear shape. It was planned as such since he had not committed to signing up for KAL yet. So no aspersion can be cast on any of the then existing foreign pilot trainees.
To cut a long and complicated story ( the plan almost derailed when some overzealous Malaysian pilots failed to see through the highly convoluted scheme ) short, it was partly successful. The agencies put pressure on KAL and MOT, the KAL flight ops MVP was able to remove some of the rogue instructors. Our plan to have all of them removed failed, but the hard core ones were warned and the removal of some stalled their plans to cull those expats who were then in training...in the end all of them passed!
The MVP was able to help recruit scores more foreign pilots after that. However, the long arm of those rogue elements from the ROK Air Force academy 2 and the navy ensured that his tenure as MVP did not last long. He was toppled from that position a year later.
The rogue elements of the KAL local pilot force come mainly from the second Air Force Academy who have strong ties to their Aviation University and the MOT. I suppose they are now maintaining their influence and stranglehold. I may be wrong as I left almost a decade ago.
When dealing with the stubborn Korean psyche, one needs to be creative and brutal when need be. Someone need to take up the cudgel.