quote:

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When Korea's first bullet train was launched with much fanfare in 2004, the female attendants on the KTX (Korea Train Express) came under the media spotlight.

Fair-skinned young women, dubbed 'stewardesses on land,' were presented on television wearing neat uniforms, beaming bright smiles and bowing gracefully.

However, two years later they are dressed in humble attire and taking industrial action, asking to be treated as regular workers.

The conditions and treatment they received fell far short of the glamorous association made with flight attendants. In reality they were contract workers hired by a subcontractor to the state-funded Korea Railroad Corp.

"As a novice to conditions in society, I did not know what 'subcontractor' and 'contract worker' meant. Nobody taught me," Kwon Soo-jin, one of the attendants on strike, told The Korea Herald.

"In the end, I was naive."

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I'm not sure what legal liability the railway has for the actions of their subcontractors, or for the fact that many of the recruits seemed to have taken informal promises at face value. However, at the very least someone at the railway should be held accountable for hiring these subcontractors.