South Korea’s tough-speaking liberal opposition leader, Lee Jae-myung, was stabbed in the neck by an unidentified knife-wielding man during a visit on Tuesday to the southeastern city of Busan, police said. Lee, 59, the head of the main opposition Democratic Party, was airlifted to a Seoul hospital for surgery after receiving emergency treatment in Busan. Police and emergency officials earlier said he was conscious after the attack and wasn’t in critical condition, but his exact status was unknown.
The attack happened as Lee walked through a crowd of journalists and others after a tour of the proposed site of a new airport in Busan. The attacker approached Lee, saying he wanted to get his autograph, and then stabbed him in the left side of his neck with a knife, senior Busan police officer Sohn Jae-han said in a televised briefing.
Sohn said Democratic Party officials near Lee quickly subdued the attacker before police officers detained him. He said 41 police officers had been deployed to the area for crowd control and traffic management. TV footage showed Lee, his eyes closed, lying on the ground as a person pressed a handkerchief to his neck to stop the bleeding. A witness, Jin Jeong-hwa, told YTN television that Lee had bled a lot. Videos circulated on social media showed the suspect, wearing a paper crown reading “I’m Lee Jae-myung,” being chased and tackled by several people, apparently including plainclothes police officers.
Sohn said the suspect, aged about 67, told investigators that he bought the 18-centimetre knife online. He said police are investigating the motive for the attack. Lee’s Democratic Party called the incident “a terrorist attack on Lee and a serious threat to democracy.” It called on police to make a through, swift investigation.
At Pusan National University Hospital in Busan, where Lee received emergency treatment, party spokesperson Kwon Chil-seung said Lee’s jugular vein was believed to have been damaged and there was concern over the large amount of bleeding. Hospital officials would not comment on Lee’s condition.
President Yoon Suk Yeol expressed deep concern about Lee’s health and ordered authorities to investigate the attack, saying such violence would not be tolerated, according to Yoon’s office.
Lee lost the 2022 presidential election to Yoon by 0.7 percentage point, the narrowest margin ever recorded in a South Korean presidential election. Since his election defeat, Lee has been a harsh critic of Yoon’s major policies. Last year, Lee held a 24-day hunger strike to protest what he called Yoon’s failure to oppose Japan’s release of treated radioactive wastewater from its crippled Fukushima nuclear power, his handling of the country’s post-pandemic economy and his hard-line policies on North Korea. Lee faces an array of corruption allegations, including that he provided unlawful favors to a private investor who reaped huge profits from a dubious housing project in the city of Seongnam, where Lee was mayor for a decade until 2018. Lee has denied legal wrongdoing and accused Yoon’s government of pursuing a political vendetta.
Last September, a South Korean court denied an arrest warrant for Lee over the allegations, but Lee reportedly faces a continuing investigation by prosecutors. The court hearing was arranged after the opposition-controlled parliament voted to lift Lee’s immunity to arrest, a move that reflected growing divisions within his Democratic Party over his legal troubles.
Lee, who also served as governor of Gyeonggi province, which surrounds Seoul, is known for his outspoken style. His supporters see him as an anti-elitist hero who could reform establishment politics, eradicate corruption and solve growing economic inequality. Critics view him as a dangerous populist who relies on stoking divisions and demonising his conservative opponents. Lee is also known for his self-made success story. He worked in a factory as a boy, an experience that left him with an arm disability. He later made his own way through school and passed the country’s notoriously difficult bar exam to work as a human rights lawyer.
Lee joined a predecessor of the Democratic Party in 2005. Previously a political outsider, he rose quickly amid public anger over an explosive 2016-17 corruption scandal that eventually led to the ouster of then-President Park Geun-hye, a conservative.
