Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, lies down after he was stabbed by an assailant on the left side of his neck during a visit to the construction site of an airport on Gadeok Island off the southeastern port city of Busan on Tuesday/ Photo by Yonhap
SEOUL, Jan. 2 (UPI) — Lee Jae-myung, the leader of South Korea’s main opposition party, was stabbed in the neck during an appearance in Busan on Tuesday and taken to a hospital, local media reported.
Lee, head of the Democratic Party, was speaking to reporters when he was struck by an unidentified man after touring the construction site of a new airport in the southeastern port city.
The suspect was pretending to be one of Lee’s supporters and asked for an autograph before striking him on the left side with a knife-like weapon roughly 8-12 inches in length, Yonhap news agency reported, citing eyewitness accounts.
Videos shown on local news station YTN and social media showed the attack by a man wearing a blue paper crown with Lee’s name on it. He was quickly subdued by police and supporters and arrested at the scene.
Lee was seen in images and videos lying on the ground and bleeding from the neck after the attack. He remained conscious and was transferred to Pusan National University Hospital, Yonhap reported.
The 59-year-old politician narrowly lost the presidential election to Yoon Suk Yeol in 2022.
Lee, the former governor of Gyeonggi province, has been the subject of a series of investigations on corruption and other charges by state prosecutors since the election. He has denounced the charges as politically motivated and conducted a 24-day hunger strike in September in protest.
President Yoon “expressed deep concern about the safety of Lee Jae-myung after hearing the news of his attack,” his spokeswoman Kim Soo-young said.
Yoon “emphasized that our society must not tolerate such acts of violence under any circumstances,” she added.
This is a developing story.