hankyoreh

A sign reading “flight attendants only” taped to a bathroom on a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight with a significant number of Korean passengers. (provided by a passenger)

As Chinese and other Asians face incidents of xenophobia around the globe amid the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, a foreign airline is coming under fire after its flight attendants allegedly took racist measures against South Korean passengers in order to “protect themselves” from the infectious disease.

On Feb. 10, a 28-year-old South Korean woman surnamed Kim, after wrapping up business overseas, boarded a plane at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in the Netherlands. She was flying back to Incheon Airport on flight KL855, operated by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

According to Kim, a notice was taped to one of the bathrooms on the airplane that said, in Korean, “This bathroom reserved for flight attendants.” Since there were various nationalities represented on the plane, Kim found it odd that the message was only in Korean, as well as that it had been scribbled on a piece of paper.

But when Kim took a photo of the notice in question, intending to share it with her colleagues, the assistant purser on the plane approached and demanded she delete the photo. Dutch regulations, she was told, forbade taking photos inside an airplane.

When Kim asked why this notice had only been written in Korean, the assistant purser, joined at this point by the purser, told her that they’d taken that measure to protect themselves from potential carriers of the coronavirus. They then said that, if Kim’s feelings were hurt, they would write the same message in English, which they proceeded to do.

Throughout this process, no announcement was made over the cabin intercom about one of the airplane lavatories being reserved for flight attendants. Koreans reportedly made up around half the passengers on the plane.

That’s why Kim argues that KLM staff were being racist when they posted a notice that could only be read by Korean passengers, since this stigmatized Korean passengers as potential carriers of the coronavirus.

“I fully understand that the flight attendants, who are at a higher risk of being infected because of their occupation, were trying to prevent further infections. But why did they only write the notice in Korean? Doesn’t that imply that only Koreans are potential carriers of the virus?” Kim told the Hankyoreh.

An Instagram post by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines apologizing for its sign.

“The purser showed me a regulation stating that it’s illegal to take pictures of other people without permission, but I took a picture of the bathroom door, not of a person. The only reason I can imagine they’d want me to delete the photo is to prevent an embarrassing situation,” Kim added.

KLM’s official Instagram account left a comment on Kim’s account on Feb. 12 explaining that the airline sometimes sets aside a bathroom for flight attendants when the plane isn’t fully occupied. KLM also expressed its regrets for passengers being offended by the notice being only in Korean and promised to carry out an internal investigation about why that happened. Several netizens have posted complaints to KLM’s Instagram account demanding that the airline apologize to its Korean passengers.

By Kim Min-je, staff reporter

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