Comments on: Taiwanese Accuse Korea Asiana Airlines Of Discrimination

By: Kai

Kai — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:21:23 +0000

Honestly, I cannot recall a single flight were boarding was arranged by nationality. I’ve been on flights where boarding was organized by:

- ticket class: first class first, then business, then economy, etc.;
- seating rows: rows x-x first, then x-x, then…;
- boarding pass priority: whoever checked in first was assigned a boarding pass that let you board earlier than those who checked in later;
- nothing at all: everyone in and take your seat.

Now, I’ve been on quite a few flights in my time and this does come as a surprise to me. I won’t say it doesn’t happen since others seem to verify it, but I personally have never witnessed priority boarding by nationality.

That said, if the explanation for giving Koreans priority was because they checked in earlier and Asiana’s boarding policy specifically gives priority to earlier check-in passengers, I would hope the Taiwanese weren’t so silly as to cause ruckus over that. I also want to believe there was an understandable but silly or inadvertently insensitive reason for why this happened. I have a hard time believing only Koreans checked in early or all and only Koreans have first-class tickets or something.

Am I missing something?

@ USTCer:

Somehow I don’t imagine the Taiwanese tourists being angry over this due to diplomatic relations or baseball rivalries. Semiconductor business? I don’t really think so either.

I don’t know the details of the train story but I can’t imagine it being a hard argument to make to say it is unfair that the train can be delayed for Japanese tourists when everyone else has been delayed too. At the same time, I applaud selfless courtesy extended to guests. Just saying…

By: fred

fred — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:28:06 +0000

Its logical and often happens to assist the gate crew read passports in an easier manner.

By: blahhaha

blahhaha — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:07:43 +0000

damn, dont u just hate those peole with boarding cards numbered 1-130? wots with discriminating against the guy with no136 boarding card? so anti ppl with boarding cards 130+. how dare they?

why dont they let black guys in my line up when im getting convicted? im 4ever the victim, disriminated against wherever i go………..

By: USTCer

USTCer — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:52:49 +0000

On the train delay for convenience of Japanese tourists: the truth is that the train was delayed for about 45 minutes in the starting station so the chief officer went thru the train one cabinet by one cabinet to apologize while the train was on the way. Then the Japanese tourists complaint to the officer that they may not be able to catch up with their flight home. That’s the reason the train stopped in a station for one more minute in order to let Japanese tourists to make time to the airport. So basically the rail system made a mistake first (45 delay) and I think the one minute delay is reasonable.

Anyway, this Korea Airline incident is totally different. Taiwanese have bad attitude towards Korean, partially because they think Koreans betrayed them(for breaking diplomatic relations with Taiwan, even Taiwan supported S.K. in korean war), partially because they are competitors in semiconductor business, and partially because Korean baseball is a strong rival of Taiwan’s.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:52:09 +0000

Sounds like somebody needs to call the waaahmbulance

The waaahmbulance can be reach on 9-1-waaaaaaaaah

By: Swiss James

Swiss James — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:24:38 +0000

So did the Koreans arrive first then?

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:16:17 +0000

The term 棒子 (Bang Zhi) or ’stick‘ to label Koreans originated from the time of the occupation of the Chinese North East (Manchuria) by the Japanese, where Koreans were hired and given sticks by the Japanese to bully and control the locals. Sort of like the evolution of the English term ‘faggot’ that also stem from the association of people to an object.