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The leader of South Korea’s leftwing opposition was stabbed in the neck on Tuesday, throwing the country’s politics into flux ahead of parliamentary elections in April.
Lee Jae-myung, who was defeated by conservative Yoon Suk Yeol by a margin of less than 1 per cent in the last presidential election in 2022, was attacked as he visited the site of a proposed airport in the southern port city of Busan.
The alleged assailant was a man in his 60s who was wearing a paper crown with Lee’s name on it, according to local media reports. Video footage from the event shows the man purporting to ask for Lee’s autograph before lunging forward and stabbing the politician in the neck with a knife. The man has been arrested.
Lee is reported to be conscious and receiving treatment after being airlifted to a hospital in Seoul. His condition is not understood to be life-threatening, according to officials cited by South Korea’s state news agency.
President Yoon condemned the attack on Lee and promised a full investigation. Lee’s Democratic party, which will challenge Yoon’s People Power party in April’s elections, described the attack as an “act of terror” and a “threat to democracy”.
While South Korean governments are appointed by the president, the outcome of the elections will determine the government’s ability to pursue its legislative agenda.
The DP currently enjoys a healthy majority in the country’s National Assembly, but polling suggests a close race, with 29 per cent of voters surveyed last month expressing a preference for the PPP, 25 per cent for the DP and 35 per cent undecided, according to Hankook Research.
The outcome of the election could also threaten Yoon’s recent diplomatic rapprochement with Japan.
Lee, who is known for his anti-Japanese rhetoric, last year accused the government of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of “nuclear terrorism” for its decision to release treated radioactive water from the failed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
A leftwing firebrand and former factory worker with criminal convictions for drink driving and impersonating a prosecutor, Lee has courted controversy during his political career.
He is presently being tried on bribery charges relating to a development project during his time as mayor of the city of Seongnam, outside Seoul. Lee, who denies the charges, launched a hunger strike in August in protest against the Yoon government’s policies, resulting in his hospitalisation the following month.
He returned to frontline politics in October but remains in the sights of the country’s powerful prosecutors. As well as the charges relating to the property development in Seongnam, he is accused of asking an underwear manufacturer to transfer $8mn to North Korea in an illegal effort to foster economic ties with the country’s dictatorship.
Lee denies any wrongdoing, accusing Yoon, a former chief prosecutor, of running “a dictatorship by prosecutors” and overseeing the “retreat of democracy in South Korea”.
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