Do you have to fly cargo for a year or something before commercial? Seems like a good idea.
most pilots spend a lot of years flying small great lakes'y planes before getting promoted to the big time. a 777 is pretty big time. pilots get paid shitty until then so this guy was probably partying pretty hard about it right until he ended his career.
This is only in the U.S.; Europe and the Middle east are notorious for sticking 500hr pilots in the right seat of an A320. I doubt Korea ia much different. The FAA has new 1,500hr minimums coming into effect soon also. (again, only for U.S. pilots, which these are not).
Without stating the obvious US pilots are significantly better trained than their compadres from the rest of the world and it's usually not even close.