SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung is in stable condition after being assaulted by a knife-wielding attacker during a visit to the country’s second-largest city, Busan, Tuesday morning.
There is, as yet, minimal news available on his attacker, a man in his 60s surnamed Kim. The assailant has refused to reveal his motive or his affiliation – if any.
While South Korea prides itself on its lack of street crime, and terrorist attacks have been unknown since the 1980s, assaults on public figures by “lone wolf” assailants wielding hand-held weapons are not uncommon.
Following this latest incident, the national police chief has vowed to upgrade close protection.
Shock assault in Busan
Mr. Lee, 59, who heads the left-leaning Democratic Party of Korea, was in stumping mode as the political community gears up for April parliamentary elections. At 10:27 a.m., he was assaulted by a man with a knife while visiting the site of a new airport in the port city of Busan in the southeast.
TV footage showed the attacker approaching Mr. Lee through a crowd of supporters, reporters and police, apparently to obtain an autograph, before lunging forward. In a melee, he was swiftly wrestled to the ground and restrained.
Footage showed Mr. Lee, eyes tightly shut, lying on his back as members of his entourage pressed a handkerchief to the bloody wound on the side of his neck.
After first aid was given in Busan and it was clear his life was not in danger, Mr. Lee was airlifted to the leading Seoul National University Hospital in Seoul.
His condition is reportedly stable.
The attacker was immediately arrested and is now in police custody. Police say his name is Kim — Korea’s most common surname — and he was born in 1957 and wielded an 18-centimeter (or 7-inch) knife.
Video footage found by local media shows that he attempted, but failed, to approach Mr. Lee during a prior visit to Busan last month.
The attacker is expected to be charged with attempted murder.
President Yoon Suk Yeol expressed concern for Mr. Lee’s condition, stating that such violence is intolerable under any circumstance.
Mr. Lee, a populist firebrand who lost 2022’s presidential election to the conservative Mr. Yoon by just 0.7 percent of the vote, has proved to be politically indestructible.
He has faced constant police and judicial probes into alleged bribery conducted during his earlier career as a major of the city of Seongnam. Though several of his affiliates have committed suicide, none of the charges have stuck to Mr. Lee, who calls the probes “a political conspiracy.”
Last September, he looked doomed when a bipartisan group including 21 members of his own party voted to strip him of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution. Yet Mr. Lee came out on top when judges refused to issue an arrest warrant.
In April’s parliamentary plebiscite, Mr. Lee’s party will seek to expand its current majority in the National Assembly. If they are successful, Mr. Yoon, who has suffered from low approval ratings since being elected, will be a “lame duck” just halfway through his single, five-year term.
Today’s lone wolves, yesterday’s terrorists
No domestic extremist groups with territorial, religious or political grievances are known to be active, and firearms laws in South Korea are stringent.
Neither issue has prevented a series of assaults on public figures on both sides of the political spectrum by lone wolves wielding hand-held weapons.
In 2022, Mr. Lee’s predecessor as head of the DP, Song Young-gil, was attacked at a public event by an assailant with a hammer. Mr. Song escaped with a concussion. His attacker was a pro-reunification YouTuber and activist angry at joint military drills.
In 2015, U.S. Ambassador to Korea Mark Lippert was assaulted with a knife while attending a breakfast event, suffering a facial wound that required plastic surgery. His attacker was a violent nationalist who had previously assaulted Japan’s ambassador.
In 2006, conservative politician Park Geun-hyu, who became president in 2013, was slashed in the face with a knife in a wound that also needed cosmetic surgery. Her attacker, who had a long criminal record, was reportedly angry at his previous convictions.
In democratic South Korea, politicians are compelled to be among the public.
“I know of politicians who ask for their close protection not to be too hard on the public, as they want more contact,” said Yang Sung-mook, who previously worked as an international relations adviser for the Democratic Party.
“It is not the case for important political figures like the leader of the opposition, but presidents are very well secured,” he added.
Tight presidential security is essential, given the deadliness of past political violence.
Ms. Park’s late mother, the wife of then-President Park Chung-hee, was assassinated by a man affiliated with North Korea in 1974. In 1979, Mr. Park himself - a divisive figure who ruled with an iron fist but dragged Korea out of millennia of poverty - was shot dead by his own intelligence chief, though the latter’s motives remain shadowy to this day.
Subsequent North Korean terrorism was less discriminate.
In 1983, North Korea bombed South Korea’s cabinet during a visit to Myanmar, killing 21. In 1986, a bomb at Seoul’s Kimpo Airport killed five. And in 1987, agents bombed a South Korean airliner, killing all 115 aboard.
These terrorist atrocities tailed off after South Korean democratized in 1987.
Recent political violence has also raised its head in neighboring Japan, a country similarly noted for safe streets.
In 2022, Japan’s longest-serving premier, Shinzo Abe, was shot dead by an attacker using a homemade firearm. The killer was angry at Mr. Abe’s affiliations with the Unification Church, a motive that led to a political crackdown on the church by the ruling party.
And in April this year, a man reportedly frustrated by his failed political ambitions attempted to kill Prime Minister Fumio Kishida with a pipe bomb. Mr. Kishida escaped without injury.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.