Intoxicated airline passenger faces 20-year sentence

A South Korea-bound Hawaiian Airlines passenger told a federal judge that he was intoxicated and doesn’t remember being put into flex cuffs after lunging at a flight attendant.

Kyong Chol Kim, 48, pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court to interfering with flight attendants and flight crew members. He faces a maximum 20-year prison term at sentencing in July.

Under the terms of his plea agreement, however, the government will recommend a period of incarceration no longer than what he will have served by his sentencing date. Kim has been in custody since his arrest Feb. 27. He also will have to pay restitution.

Hawaiian Airlines estimates it cost $172,000 to return the aircraft to Honolulu and resume the flight for the remaining passengers. Hawaiian and the court will have a final amount by sentencing.

U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson told Kim, a South Korean national, that he also can expect to be barred from entering the United States and from applying for citizenship.

Kim asked Watson through a Korean interpreter how long he will be barred and whether that applies to tourist visits. Watson told Kim to assume that he will be barred “in perpetuity for any purpose.”

It is not the courts, but the executive branch of the government that can refuse entry into the country.

Kim arrived in Honolulu on Feb. 25. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers refused him entry for not having proper documentation. They took him to the Federal Detention Center until they could put him on Hawaiian Airlines Flight 459 back to South Korea two days later.

Prior to takeoff, witnesses saw a DFS worker hand Kim a package containing a bottle of whiskey in the duty-free zone. It is not clear who purchased the whiskey.

Kim said Monday that when he drank the whiskey, he was exhausted and didn’t realize how strong it was.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Ayabe said Kim finished the bottle by the time the flight attendants began the flight’s first service, bothered a 10-year-old sitting next to him and stepped on the boy’s shoulder to lunge at a flight attendant who told him in Korean to leave the boy alone.

Ayabe said Kim yelled in Korean that he was going to get the flight attendant and that “he’s a criminal and could cause trouble.”

Other flight attendants and passengers put flex cuffs on Kim and secured him in another seat at the back of the aircraft. The pilot decided to turn around the plane about three hours into the flight after receiving reports that Kim continued yelling and was fighting to get out of his restraints.