The leader of South Korea’s main opposition party, Lee Jae-myung, was stabbed in the neck on Tuesday by an assailant wearing a paper crown with Lee’s name scrawled across the front, according to livestreamed footage of the attack.
Lee was in the port city of Busan, visiting the site of a proposed airport, when a middle-aged man approached the 59-year-old politician and asked for an autograph, the footage showed. He then lunged at Lee with what local media described as a “knife-like weapon,” reportedly leaving a one-centimeter gash.
Lee, who heads the country’s Democratic Party, narrowly lost the 2022 presidential election to conservative Yoon Suk-yeol. The attack occurred shortly before 10:30 a.m. while speaking to reporters, according to Yonhap. Lee did not lose consciousness, but he collapsed to the ground and “the bleeding continued,” the outlet reported. Photographs posted online by news outlets showed Lee, lying prone, with his eyes closed and pressure being applied to his neck with a handkerchief. He was taken to a local hospital for treatment, South Korean officials told Reuters.
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The unidentified suspect was arrested at the scene. No motive has yet been revealed.
Yoon expressed “deep concern over the safety of Lee Jae-myung upon hearing of the attack,” spokeswoman Kim Soo-kyung said. “Yoon emphasized [that] our society should never tolerate this kind of act of violence under any circumstances.”
After Yoon took office, Lee was brought up on bribery charges related to a real estate development project during his tenure as mayor of Seongnam, a city about 15 miles outside of Seoul. Lee protested the move with a 19-day hunger strike, and accused Yoon of weaponizing the criminal justice system against his political rivals.
Lee’s predecessor, Song Young-gil, was attacked last year at a campaign stop in Seoul by a 70-year-old man wearing traditional dress and wielding a hammer wrapped in a black plastic bag. Song received several stitches and spent the night in the hospital. His attacker was a YouTuber who wore a sign around his neck with the name of his channel, the Korea JoongAng Daily reported at the time.
“I am against South Korea-U.S. military exercises,” witnesses said Song’s alleged assailant shouted. “I can’t pass on such a world to young people.”
