The police are investigating reports that Cho Hyun-min, another daughter of Korean Air’s chairman, threw water in an advertising executive’s face.
SEOUL, South Korea — The police on Friday began looking into accusations that a sister of Korean Air’s infamous “nut rage” heiress physically abused an advertising executive, insulting him and hurling water in his face during a business meeting.
Cho Hyun-min, 35, is a younger sister of Cho Hyun-ah, a Korean Air vice president whose 2014 tantrum over how macadamia nuts had been served to her in first class made the company a target of ridicule and outrage, in South Korea and elsewhere. Both women are daughters of Cho Yang-ho, the airline’s chairman.
In the “nut rage” incident, Cho Hyun-ah used abusive language, threw documents and even made flight attendants kneel and beg for forgiveness for serving the nuts without first asking her — and in an unopened package, rather than on a plate. Still not satisfied, Ms. Cho ordered the Korean Air plane back to its gate while it was taxiing at New York’s Kennedy International Airport so she could have the chief flight attendant removed.
She was sentenced to one year in prison by a South Korean court for violating airline safety laws. An appeals court later released her after reducing her sentence to a suspended term.
During the furor in South Korea over the “nut rage” episode, Cho Hyun-min, then a Korean Air executive in charge of corporate communications, sent a Twitter message to her sister, vowing “revenge” against unspecified enemies of the family, according to investigators. She later apologized for what she called her “immature” behavior.
Cho Hyun-ah’s conduct made her a lightning rod for South Koreans who feel that leaders of the country’s family-run business conglomerates, or chaebol, which dominate the economy, act as if they are above the law.
