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Lee Jae-myung, the chief of South Korea’s major opposition occasion, was stabbed within the neck on Tuesday morning, in response to the police and live-streamed TV footage.
Mr. Lee, the chief of the liberal Democratic Get together, was visiting the southern port metropolis of Busan when a 66-year-old man stabbed him, mentioned Son Je-han, a senior investigator with the Busan police. Mr. Lee, 59, had simply completed taking questions from journalists after touring the location of a deliberate airport and was making his manner by way of a crowd when he was attacked, in response to the footage.
The police in Busan mentioned the assailant had been detained and was underneath investigation for a attainable cost of tried homicide. However they didn’t present any particulars about Mr. Lee’s situation or the motives of the attacker, who they mentioned had used a knife with a five-inch blade.
Mr. Lee was bleeding from the neck earlier than being taken away in an ambulance, in response to information studies and pictures from the scene. He was taken to a hospital in Busan, then flown to Seoul by helicopter for therapy at Seoul Nationwide College Hospital.
By midafternoon, there had been no official assertion about Mr. Lee’s situation, however native information studies instructed that his harm was not life-threatening.
Footage from the assault confirmed the assailant approaching Mr. Lee by way of a gaggle of TV digicam operators, apparently posing as one in every of his supporters; he was sporting what gave the impression to be a paper or plastic crown, bearing the phrases “I’m Lee Jae-myung.” Supporters and cops overpowered the person after the stabbing and took him to a police automotive.
“The person approached Mr. Lee, asking for his autograph in a loud voice,” Mr. Son informed reporters at a information briefing.
Mr. Lee’s occasion considers the incident an “act of terror” and an “assault in opposition to democracy,” mentioned Kwon Chilseung, a celebration spokesman. Citing medical doctors in Busan, Mr. Kwon mentioned a jugular vein in Mr. Lee’s neck appeared to have been broken.
Yoon Hee-keun, the chief of South Korea’s nationwide police company, ordered beefed-up safety for politicians and different outstanding officers.
Mr. Lee was narrowly defeated by Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative, in South Korea’s final presidential election, in 2022. He has since been subjected to a sequence of investigations by state prosecutors on corruption and different prison fees.
He denied all the costs in opposition to him and went on a three-week starvation strike in protest, accusing Mr. Yoon of utilizing the prison justice system to intimidate his political opponents. A court docket refused to permit prosecutors to arrest Mr. Lee, however he faces the prospect of a sequence of trials.
Mr. Yoon expressed “deep concern” about Mr. Lee’s security on Tuesday, ordering his authorities to hold out a fast investigation of the assault and to supply help for his medical therapy, the president’s workplace mentioned in an announcement.
“The president emphasised that this type of violence shouldn’t be tolerated underneath any circumstances in our society,” the assertion mentioned.
South Korean politics have turn into more and more polarized in recent times, and rancor between Mr. Yoon’s supporters and Mr. Lee’s has been rising with the method of parliamentary elections in April.
However bodily assaults on politicians have been unusual. In 2006, the conservative politician Park Geun-hye, then an opposition chief, was slashed within the face with a field cutter by a person who had been a vehement critic of her. Ms. Park went on to win the 2012 presidential election.
In 2015, a self-styled nationalist who had expressed anti-American sentiments reduce the face of Mark W. Lippert, then the USA ambassador to South Korea, with a kitchen knife.
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