South Korean opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung yesterday was stabbed in the neck with a knife by a man who pushed through a crowd pretending to be a supporter, police said.
The wound was not life-threatening, local media reported, after Lee was attacked at a construction site in the southern port city of Busan.
He was surrounded by journalists when a man lunged and struck him on the left side of his neck, Busan police official Son Je-han said at a news conference.
Photo: AFP
The assailant, a man in his 60s, “used an 18cm knife — its blade is 13cm long — which he purchased online,” Son told reporters.
Police were seen wrestling the suspect, who displayed a pro-Lee slogan, to the ground.
The man was arrested at the scene. His motive is “being investigated,” Son said.
The 59-year-old Lee was “walking to his car while talking to reporters when the attacker asked for his autograph,” a witness told local broadcaster YTN.
In TV footage, Lee was seen collapsing to the ground as people rushed to aid him after the attack.
One man was seen pressing a handkerchief on Lee’s neck before emergency responders carried him to an ambulance.
Lee was bleeding, but conscious as he was rushed to a local university hospital, Yonhap news agency reported, before being flown to the capital, Seoul, for surgery, an official from his party said.
“This is an act of terror against Lee and a serious threat to democracy that should never occur under any circumstances,” Kwon Chil-seung, a lawmaker from Lee’s Democratic Party, told reporters outside the hospital in Busan.
Yonhap earlier reported, citing fire department officials, that Lee sustained a 1cm laceration in the attack.
It cited a hospital official as saying it was “fortunate that the damaged area is the jugular vein” and not the carotid artery.
Lee in 2022 lost to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in the tightest presidential race in the nation’s history.
Yoon expressed “deep concern over the safety of Lee Jae-myung upon hearing of the attack,” his spokeswoman Kim Soo-kyung said. “Yoon emphasized our society should never tolerate this kind of act of violence under any circumstances.”
A former child factory worker who suffered an industrial accident as a teenage school dropout, Lee rose to political stardom partly by playing up his rags-to-riches tale.
He is widely expected to run for president again in 2027, and recent polls have indicated that he remains a strong contender.
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