Airplane Crashes, Loud Americans, and Dating: How the ‘Cultural Free Market’ is Changing the World
Back in 2013, when I was living in South Korea, a Korean passenger plane crashed in San Francisco. As the initial phase of the investigation ruled out mechanical error, I wasn’t surprised to hear Korean culture mentioned as a possible cause.
Korean airlines from the ’70s to the late ’90s had a series of crashes blamed on pilot error, as Malcolm Gladwell laid out in his book Outliers, which experts said were linked to its culture. In these crashes, Korea’s deeply ingrained respect for hierarchy prevented subordinates from directly challenging their captains. This even applied when the captains were doing things like mistakenly flying over hostile Soviet airspace or flying directly into a mountain in Guam.
In fact, Korean Air, the country’s flagship airline, had such a bad safety record that one of the country’s Prime Ministers during the time called it a national embarrassment. The troubled airline was also threatened with being banned from flying in the US if it didn’t address pilot training in this regard. (For a well-written but factually flawed article arguing against the role of culture in these plane crashes, check out Ask a Korean.)
The fiery crash in San Francisco was ultimately determined to have resulted from the crew…
