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.
Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao (李佳豪) on Sunday won a silver medal at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England, a career best. Lee, 25, took silver in the final of the men’s singles against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi (石宇奇) of China, who won 21-17, 21-19 in a tough match that lasted 51 minutes. After the match, the Taiwanese player, who ranks No. 22 in the world, said it felt unreal to be challenging an opponent of Shi’s caliber. “I had to be in peak form, and constantly switch my rhythm and tactics in order to score points effectively,” he said. Lee got
‘CROWN JEWEL’: Washington ‘can delay and deter’ Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plans for Taiwan, but it is ‘a very delicate situation there,’ the secretary of state said US President Donald Trump is opposed to any change to Taiwan’s “status quo” by force or extortion and would maintain that policy, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Hugh Hewitt Show host on Wednesday. The US’ policy is to maintain Taiwan’s “status quo” and to oppose any changes in the situation by force or extortion, Rubio said. Hewitt asked Rubio about the significance of Trump earlier this month speaking with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) at the White House, a meeting that Hewitt described as a “big deal.” Asked whether the meeting was an indication of the
‘RELATIVELY STRONG LANGUAGE’: An expert said the state department has not softened its language on China and was ‘probably a little more Taiwan supportive’ China’s latest drills near Taiwan on Monday were “brazen and irresponsible threats,” a US Department of State spokesperson said on Tuesday, while reiterating Washington’s decades-long support of Taipei. “China cannot credibly claim to be a ‘force for stability in a turbulent world’ while issuing brazen and irresponsible threats toward Taiwan,” the unnamed spokesperson said in an e-mailed response to media queries. Washington’s enduring commitment to Taiwan will continue as it has for 45 years and the US “will continue to support Taiwan in the face of China’s military, economic, informational and diplomatic pressure campaign,” the e-mail said. “Alongside our international partners, we firmly
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it has lodged a protest with Pretoria after the name of the Taipei Liaison Office in South Africa was changed to the “Taipei Commercial Office” on the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation’s (DIRCO) Web site. In October last year, the South African government asked Taiwan to relocate the Taipei Liaison Office, the nation’s de facto embassy, out of Pretoria. It later agreed to continue negotiating through official channels, but in January asked that the office be relocated by the end of this month. As of the middle of last month, DIRCO’s Web
RSS