....surprised they didn't just shoot him on the spot.

Ivan doesn't seem to have a lot of patience with out of bounds Koreans....

To have beaten 36,000 people to a zero-g holiday, only to lose out because you accidentally took a space spanner home? Super gutted, that’s how.

His only hope of a silver lining now is if the rocket blows up on the pad. Then at least he can dine out on the story of the time that, “If I hadn’t left that spanner in my jeans then I’d be a sooty smudge by now!”

There's no room for idiots in space. What if he forgot to shut the airlock?

I bet the breach of protocol was just an excuse. I'm sure the Russian controllers would not have grounded him for a minor thing like that.

Either he was caught actually passing really sensitive data to someone else or he has just proved being nuts and a PITA but to save his and his officials' faces the Russians have agreed to make up a story.

It may also be that the lady in question slept her way to the top.

Paris, because she would never sleep her way to the top.

It appears he did two things -

a) He "accidentally" mailed to Korea a training manual that was not supposed to EVER leave the training compound (ie pretty sensitive stuff)

b) Was found in possession of another training manual which he had no authority to possess.

Sounds to me like he did a lot of dodgy stuff which certainly leads one to suspect espionage. I guarantee the only reason he isnt in a russian prison somewhere for it is because a lot of money changed hands from the Koreans to the Russians in order to allow the Koreans to save face.

...you capitalist dog!

Dog? Did someone say lunch?

He deserved what he got. What an idiot, losing an opportunity such as this!