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tripstations · 5 years

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Korean Air and the Hanjin Group Chairman and founder of Skyteam died in Los Angeles

Yang Ho Cho, 70, Chairman and CEO of Korean Air and the Hanjin Group, died peacefully April 7 in a Los Angeles hospital after a brief illness. He was considered to be an Air transport pioneer.

Mr. Cho’s reach extended far beyond Asia. He was a founder of the Skyteam international airline alliance and led the bid committee that took the 2018 Winter Olympics to Korea. He recently completed development of the iconic Wilshire Grand complex in downtown Los Angeles, the tallest building west of the Mississippi.

He served on the Board of Governors of the International Air Transport Association (IATA); the Board of Trustees of his alma mater, University of Southern California; and has received honorary doctorate degrees from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (Florida) and the Ukraine National Aviation University.

Under his guidance, Korean Air became a global powerhouse flying to 124 cities and 44 countries, emerging as America’s largest Asian airline with 15 North American gateways. He recently negotiated a joint venture with Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, that created the industry’s most comprehensive transpacific network. The airlines are scheduled to launch a new non-stop route between Boston and Seoul on April 12.

Mr. Cho was in the airline industry all his life, as his father, Choong-Hoon Cho, had acquired and privatized Korean Air 50 years ago. The younger Cho was named the airline’s Chairman and CEO in 1999 having served as President and CEO four years earlier. Mr. Cho began working for Korean Air as a manager in the Americas Regional Headquarters in Los Angeles in 1974 after graduating from the University of Southern California.

Three weeks ago Korean Air investors removed him from the board in a victory for shareholder activism.

Mr. Cho’s leadership has been widely recognized over the years. He was awarded the title of `Grand Officier’ in France’s Légion d’Honneur, ‘Polaris’ in Mongolia and also the `Mugunghwa Medal’ in Korea – all of which are the highest order of civil merit awarded in these countries.

In addition to his corporate responsibilities, Mr. Cho was vice chairman of the Federation of Korean Industries, co-chairman of the Korea-U.S. Business Council, and served as the co-president of l’Année France-Corée 2015-2016’, celebrating 130 years of diplomatic relations between Korea and France.

Mr. Cho is survived by his wife, Myung-hee Lee, son Walter, daughters Heather and Emily and five grandsons. Services are pending in South Korea.

Travel News | eTurboNews

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newstfionline · 7 years

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As Scandal Roils South Korea, Fingers Point to Mixing of Politics and Business

By Choe Sang-Hun and Motoko Rich, NY Times, Jan. 2, 2017

SEOUL, South Korea--The heir apparent to the Samsung empire, Jay Y. Lee, was trying to push through a corporate merger seen as critical to his plans to succeed his father as chairman.

For months, key shareholders fought the move. Then, suddenly, the standoff broke as South Korea’s government-controlled pension fund, which held the shares to cast the deciding vote, endorsed Mr. Lee’s deal.

A week later, President Park Geun-hye invited Mr. Lee to her office and asked for Samsung’s help with a campaign to promote South Korean culture and sports. Within months, Samsung had donated $17.4 million to two foundations controlled by the president’s confidante, Choi Soon-sil, and $6.2 million for the training of Korean equestrians, including Ms. Choi’s daughter.

Those donations--and whether they were part of a quid pro quo--are now at the heart of the impeachment case against Ms. Park. The nation’s full Constitutional Court will begin formal hearings on Tuesday into the case, the biggest influence-peddling scandal in South Korea’s history.

The court has never before ousted a president, though seven of the last eight have left office tainted by allegations of corruption. Whatever the court decides, the Park scandal has already put recurring collusion between big business and government in South Korea under intense scrutiny and could reshape the nation’s flawed, young democracy.

“We created a miracle on the streets,” said You Jong-il, a professor of macroeconomics and development policy in Sejong City, referring to huge, peaceful street protests demanding Ms. Park’s resignation. “But we are still very worried about whether we will really be able to change Korean society and Korean politics.”

Public outrage--initially aimed at the influence that Ms. Choi, the daughter of a religious sect leader, appeared to exercise over the Park administration--has turned to broader concerns about the political system: the power of the presidency, and its symbiotic relationship with the chaebol, the family-controlled conglomerates like Samsung that dominate the economy.

“Chaebol are accomplices!” protesters have chanted, carrying effigies of their leaders dressed in blue prison uniforms. Damning new details emerge weekly.

Prosecutors allege that Ms. Choi conspired with Ms. Park to force 53 companies to donate more than $69 million to the two foundations under Ms. Choi’s control.

The National Assembly went further in its impeachment motion, describing the donations as bribes personally benefiting Ms. Choi and paid in return for favors for the companies, ranging from lucrative licenses to presidential pardons.

Ms. Park has denied the charges. At an extraordinary parliamentary hearing, Mr. Lee and eight other chaebol leaders also denied receiving or seeking special treatment for the donations. But they appeared to acknowledge that the payments were not entirely voluntary.

“It was difficult to go against the government’s wishes,” testified Koo Bon-moo, the chairman of LG, the multinational electronics company.

Mr. Lee called Samsung’s contribution “not voluntary” but “inevitable.”

The meeting with Mr. Lee was one of eight that Ms. Park held with top chaebol executives in July 2015. Her lawyers have acknowledged that she asked for contributions to the two foundations in the meetings but deny that she promised any favors. Little is known about what else was discussed in these one-on-one sessions.

The impeachment motion alleges that Ms. Park prepared for the meetings by asking her chief economic adviser, Ahn Chong-bum, for a memo outlining issues that the chaebol needed help with.

But there is no doubt the chaebol have benefited from government support for decades.

Ms. Park’s father, Park Chung-hee, the country’s first military dictator, pioneered the economic model before his assassination in 1979. He showered a handful of businesses with favors such as tax benefits, cheap electricity, a buy-Korea policy and the suppression of organized labor.

These companies eventually grew into industrial conglomerates, fueling the export-driven growth that lifted South Korea out of postwar poverty and made it one of the world’s most dynamic economies.

Some of the firms, such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG, are now global brands with publicly listed shares. But the founding families still dominate almost all the conglomerates, in part, critics say, because of lax enforcement of corporate governance and tax laws.

In return for their support, Park and many of his successors as president expected the chaebol to contribute to government projects. And the chaebol did more than that, sometimes channeling money to the presidents’ personal coffers or those of their relatives and associates.

South Koreans are increasingly skeptical of the chaebol and the economic model they represent. The country’s largest shipping line, Hanjin, recently filed for bankruptcy. Samsung, the icon of South Korean technological prowess, suffered global humiliation with its recent recall of exploding Galaxy Note 7 smartphones.

The chaebol also face competition from China, which has begun producing many of the same goods, like petrochemicals, more cheaply. Some have angered the public by shifting manufacturing abroad even as their tentacle-like grip on the economy at home is blamed for squeezing start-ups and stifling innovation.

Yet the conglomerates still enjoy some of the benefits that Park Chung-hee conferred on them more than four decades ago. They are taxed at lower effective rates than most companies or individuals, and receive more tax breaks. Businesses also pay lower electricity rates than individual consumers in South Korea.

The benefits of such policies, Professor You said, “is a very different order of magnitude compared to the sums of money that were donated to the foundations.”

“All decisions are made with the interests of the chaebol in mind,” he added of policy-making in recent decades. Politicians and the chaebol, he said, “have been relying on each other to maintain their power.”

Few South Koreans believe the chaebol are innocent victims in the unfolding case. But while Ms. Choi and Mr. Ahn, the president’s economic adviser, have been arrested, the authorities have not taken action against executives at any of the businesses.

Historically, the chaebol titans have not been immune from prosecution. On the contrary, several have been convicted of bribery, tax evasion and embezzlement--yet remained at the helm of their businesses.

That is because they are often granted suspended sentences or presidential pardons. At least six of the nation’s top 10 chaebol, which generate revenue equivalent to more than 80 percent of gross domestic product, are led by men with criminal records.

“What we need is a great national cleanup,” said Moon Jae-in, an opposition leader who is the leading candidate to succeed Ms. Park. “We must sternly punish politics-business collusion, a legacy of the dictatorial era, and take this as an opportunity to reform chaebol.”

This is a recurring promise among presidential aspirants in South Korea. Almost every candidate in recent elections--including Ms. Park--has vowed to end government collusion with the chaebol. But the culture remains entrenched.

The problem is exacerbated by how much power is concentrated in the presidency, relative to the legislature or to the judiciary. The president enjoys considerable influence over prosecutors, tax collectors and state security agents, whose careers are largely determined by political loyalty rather than merit.

Another problem is the news media, which can be hesitant to confront the government and the chaebol, who are major advertisers. The president effectively handpicks the heads of the two biggest television stations, and the government can revoke the licenses of cable news channels.

Journalists who tried to investigate Ms. Choi suffered a vicious official backlash.

As early as 2014, the Segye Ilbo newspaper reported on an intelligence document alleging influence-peddling by Ms. Choi’s family. Ms. Park attacked the leak, and her office pressed the newspaper to fire its president, according to the impeachment motion.

Instead of investigating the allegations in the document, prosecutors interrogated Segye journalists on possible defamation charges, and reporters at the newspaper said the tax authorities had begun investigating businesses owned by the paper’s parent company.

A police officer accused of leaking the document killed himself. “Listen, journalists!” Lt. Choi Kyong-rak wrote in his suicide note. “The people’s right to know is what you live and exist for. Please do your job.”

Given the authority of the presidency, relatives and close friends often operate as rainmakers. In the past, the presidents’ siblings and sons, while holding no official titles, often wielded enormous power as “junior presidents.”

Ms. Park is unmarried, childless and estranged from her siblings, a status that she said would free her from nepotism and break the pattern. But she had Ms. Choi, whose family befriended her after the assassination of her mother in 1974.

Prosecutors did not aggressively investigate the allegations against Ms. Choi until after Ms. Park delivered her first televised apology in October, a day after a local cable channel reported that Ms. Choi had edited the president’s speeches.

The story emboldened the press, prompting a flood of other damaging disclosures and then the huge street protests that eventually led prosecutors to conclude it was no longer politically tenable to do nothing.

Cho Eung-cheon, a former prosecutor who is now an opposition lawmaker, said the authorities had moved too late.

“The prosecutors we see now,” he wrote on his Facebook page, “are nothing more or less than a pack of hyenas attacking a crippled lion.”

#South Korea #park geun-hye impeached #chaebol

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stefanieaugust · 7 years

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Today we are 1!

Wow - its been an interesting 7 months for me leaving the comfort of my home and partnership to travel the country, observing how we have succumbed to the down fall of America that starts with a T and has ripped the USA a new RUMP! I have not posted in seven months due to pc issues but have watched our markets crash and burn since April and our trade deals sully to rust like the hull of the forgotten Hanjin.

Everything this idiot touches reeks of incompetence, nepotism, arrogance and the kind of drama one would expect from a television icon... except that he's so ugly as a person even poor Melly-Mel won't hold hands with him in front of the cameras anymore.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/melania-trump-donald-hands-video-rejection-rome-israel-watch-a7752191.html

I have no qualms about calling our President names; in fact he needs to be challenged on every decision he has made to date, and has been by some of our greater press writers who have encouraged the global press to watch and learn:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-berger/trump-profile-of-a-sociopath_b_11318128.html

Now on to what may be happening in our global markets since April.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4059124-5-charts-show-trump-effect-markets-continues-april-2017

We are at a point in the Brexit where we can expect a down turn in the pound against the USD and other currencies too, even though there has been an upswing over these past few months, which is normal activity when a currency is reissued.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/3361681/pound-to-euro-dollar-exchange-rate-2017-high-general-election/

Keep in mind: It took Teresa May just a few moments to realize she was dealing with a shyster when she shared crumpets with the Donald, given the changes in global trade policies and manufacturing opportunities being given to larger conglomerates and cronies in the US.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-02/trump-says-foxconn-could-triple-u-s-investment-to-30-billion

You think those 1,300 jobs noted in the article above are meant for just anyone? Why should the average American care about any of this?

Because soon we will be outsourced as the new servant class to anyone who has the budget. Trust me I am in a seaside town right now where the color of one's skin is predominately white unless well tanned and the attitude toward the immigrants and local workers here is one of American disdain as they look down their noses - give us our crappy crab and give it to us now!

And then there is still incoming from Aleppo, Syria, and beyond, war victims and migrants who will be the first to have to put up with our sense of nationalism as we attempt to hold our place in the world as a great country.

After 6 months in the Tenderloin working as an advocate for homeless people with limited services and now in this village by the sea I can only say as I said to my young Albanian friend over breakfast this morning, that American's do not know who they are because we come from every where and until we face our greatest fear of being an amalgam of color and race we will always be enslaved to the mindset of us versus them.

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