Tscottme
To the journalist answering about seniority and racism. As an earlier comment described there are various measures of seniority. For example, age is one measure of seniority and so is class-level in school (freshman, sophmor, junior, senior). Membership in the Korean Air Force seems to bestow seniority above equally suited civilian pilots.
I believe earlier info indicated the Pilot Flying was ahead of Pilot Monitoring (Training Captain) at aviation academy. The hours of flying experience which is the usual measure of seniority in US aviation may not be how pilots in Korean culture measure seniority, or it may only supersede some other measures of seniority. That is what the I-See-Racism-Everywhere posters are missing.
This is well documented in Malcolm Gladwell's book. It has been noted in a previous accident, I think KAL at Guam. You and other American flying pilots who measure exerience only in flight hours may stop looking for seniority issues at flight hours, but there is comment from other pilots in various Asian countries, airlines, and jobs reporting what they see, as it differs from what they have seen in America and EU. Aren't different cultures allowed to have their own views on things or are modern leftist politics now mandating all cultures are identical in all situations?
I am familiar with Gladwell's chapter on KAL. I'm also familiar with Korea. I was a foreign correspondent in the country for 17 years and based on all that I've read, it is premature to talk about how seniority affected the decision-making process in that cockpit.
In Korea, age is the most basic factor to determine seniority. For this age-based hierarchy to be neutralized, there has to be a confluence of some very unusual circumstances.
Re the information about the flying pilot being ahead of the trainer at flight academy. I'm not sure how reliable that is but had that been the case, it certainly would not have stopped the older guy from speaking up. Please keep in mind, at least for the flight, he is the "teacher" and in Asian countries, teachers are respected in ways that American educators can only dream of.
As some of you have already noted, Korea is a comparatively rigid society. There is a three-year gap between the two pilots. For the younger pilot to be a senior to the older man at a previous institution, he either had to be exceptionally brilliant a la Sheldon Cooper and skipped a few grades to enter the academy ahead of the older gentleman. Or the other bloke is so hopefully stupid that he wasted three years doing something useless and ended up being subordinate to people younger than him which doesn't happen very often over there.
To whit, the only scenario where the younger Lee might be in a superior position where the other guy felt intimidated enough not to speak up about a potentially disastrous decision is if the younger pilot was married to Asiana chairman's daughter or is related to the Minister of Transportation. Assuming that he isn't, speculating about potential cultural dynamics in the cockpit at this juncture is not very constructive.