I am aghast at the report from Seoul that Korean Air heiress Cho Hyun-ah could face up to 15 years in jail over the "nut rage" incident on board a KAL flight from Seoul to New York on Dec 5.
She was charged with aviation safety violations, with coercing KAL staff to give false testimony in the case and interfering with their duties.
The charges stemmed from an incident when Ms Cho, then KAL vice president, was served macadamia nuts, that she said she had not asked for, in a bag instead of a bowl by a member of the first-class cabin crew.
She reportedly went bonkers and forced the chief steward to kneel and beg for her forgiveness. She ordered the chief purser to be taken off the flight and the plane, which was already at the runway, had to return to the gate so he could disembark.
Ten years for allegedly compromising aviation safety while the plane was still on the runway – an argument that the defence lawyer said they would raise with the court – and five years for allegedly coercing staff to give false testimony. That is incredibly outlandish and unimaginable by Thai standards of justice, especially for a very rich woman.
And particularly so because Ms Cho was seen in green prison uniform when she appeared before the packed courtroom to answer preliminary questions about the case.
Again, that is not the kind of thing that will ever be seen in our courtrooms for such offences, which are likely to be waved away by law enforcement officers here as petty because nobody was killed, harmed or even endangered, in their view. Moreover, the plane itself was intact, though the flight was delayed.
If such an incident happened in this country, Ms Cho would never be seen wearing a prison uniform. She would be granted bail from the start. Or there would not be a case at all and she would probably still the vice president of the airline.
A girl identified as Orachorn "Praewa" Thephasadin Na Ayudhya, 16, uses her mobile phone after a car she was driving was involved in a fatal crash with a passenger van in Dec 27, 2010. (Bangkok Post file photo)
The prospect of her actually getting 15 years in prison is totally unimaginable here because that is not the way the so-called elite is treated by the justice system here.
Ms Cho’s case reminds me of the "Praewa" case over four years ago. Remember the case? A 16-year old girl who crashed her car into a public van packed with passengers, many of them staff from Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus, on the tollway. Nine of the passengers died and five others were seriously injured when it plunged to the ground below.
The girl, later identified as Orachorn "Praewa" Thephasadin Na Ayudhya, emerged unscathed and was seen calmly making calls on her mobile afterwards.
The "nut rage" incident provoked an uproar in South Korea, and Praewa’s case triggered a sea of criticism here, both in the mainstream media and on the social media, both of the girl and the way the police handled the case.
Because of her young age, Praewa was charged in the juvenile court which sentenced her to two years imprisonment, suspended for three years, and 48 hours of public services. She was also banned from driving until she is 25. She did not even have a licence at the time of the accident. She was too young. But her family gave her a car nonetheless.
The Appeals Court last April upheld the prison term, but suspended it for four years. She was also ordered to do public service for 48 hours a year for four years, and the ban on driving until she is 25 continued.
Relatives of the victims wanted the criminal proceedings to end quickly, so that they can start civil litigation to demand compensation from the girl’s well-off family.