US ambassador to South Korea in stable condition after knife attack
Print Edition
UNITED States Ambassador Mark Lippert was in a stable condition after a man screaming demands for a unified North and South Korea slashed him on the face and wrist with a knife, South Korean police and US officials said yesterday.
Media images showed a stunned-looking Lippert examining his blood-covered left hand and holding his right hand over a cut on the right side of his face, his pink tie splattered with blood.
The US State Department condemned the attack, which happened at a performing arts center in downtown Seoul as the ambassador was preparing for a lecture about prospects for peace on the divided Korean Peninsula.
The US Embassy later said Lippert was in a stable condition after surgery at a Seoul hospital.
In a televised briefing, Chung Nam-sik of the Severance Hospital said 80 stiches were needed to close the facial wound, which was 11 centimeters long and 3cm deep.
He said the knife penetrated through Lippert’s left arm and damaged the nerves connected to his little finger and tendons connected to his thumb. Lippert will need to be treated for the next three or four days and might experience sensory problems in his left hand for several months, Chung said.
The attack will shock many outsiders because the US is South Korea’s closest ally, its military protector and a big trading partner and cultural influence.
But the reported comments of the suspect, 55-year-old Kim Ki-jong, during the attack‚ — “South and North Korea should be reunified,” — touch on a deep political divide in South Korea over the still-fresh legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which is still technically ongoing because it ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Some South Koreans blame the presence of 28,500 US troops stationed in the South as a deterrent to North Korea for the continuing split of the Korean Peninsula along the world’s most heavily armed border.
The attack came suddenly, witnesses said. A knife-wielding man ran screaming up to Lippert as soup was being served for the breakfast meeting and began slashing, said Kim Young-man, spokesman for the group hosting the breakfast, the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation.
Yonhap TV showed men in suits and ties piled on top of the attacker, who was dressed in a modern version of the traditional Korean hanbok, and Lippert later being rushed to a police car with a blood-soaked handkerchief pressed to his cheek.
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