SDF

Formerly a cabin crew chief, I am currently a flight attendant for Korean Air. I joined the airline as a flight attendant in 1996, and within three months, was assigned to serve VIPs on board and named a Korean Air brand ambassador. I have always prided myself on being a diligent, loyal employee. In 2005, I was promoted to cabin crew chief, a role I held until the so-called “nut rage” incident in 2014. After the incident, I learned the painful lesson that my company and I were not part of the same collective entity, but rather, entirely distinct entities.

Companies are organizations that apply a strict cost-benefit calculus, where people who have outlived their usefulness can be abandoned without mercy. It’s possible that in trying to be the best employee I could be, I bought into the illusion that this wasn’t so, that the company and I were one and the same: one entity with one goal. After experiencing a gross abuse of power, and being discarded like a superfluous expendable part, I was awakened to a stronger awareness of who I am and what the company is to me.

Publicly humiliated and professionally ruined, I found myself backed into a corner, with little choice but to resign myself to my fate. It was then that I decided to share my side of the story with the media. I could not have foreseen what would happen next. I found myself thrust into the limelight once again, and subjected to a second wave of abuse and criticism. I called on all my courage to act on my convictions, and I paid, and continue to pay, a heavy price.

After another controversy over the “water rage” incident in April 2018, other employees experienced the same “awakening” I had years earlier, and we have since been working together to call for an end to the abuse of power in corporate settings. Nothing has come of our efforts yet, but we have only become more determined in our resolve to stand our ground and make our voices heard. In July 2018, my colleagues and I formed the Korean Air Kalvoice Union under the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers' Union. On August 6, I became the first head of the Korean Air Kalvoice Union to be elected through a direct election. I have not, and will not, give up fighting for our cause.