US envoy to S Korea in stable condition after attack

SEOUL — United States Ambassador Mark Lippert was in stable condition after a man screaming demands for a unified North and South Korea slashed him on the face and wrist with a knife, the South Korean police and US officials said yesterday.

Media images showed a stunned-looking Mr 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 centre 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 Mr Lippert was in stable condition after surgery at a Seoul hospital.

In a televised briefing, Mr Chung Nam-sik of Severance Hospital said 80 stitches were needed to close the facial wound, which was 11cm long and 3cm deep. He added the cut did not affect his nerves or salivary gland.

Mr Chung said the knife penetrated Mr Lippert’s left arm and damaged the nerves connected to his pinkie and tendons connected to his thumb. Mr Lippert will need to be treated at the hospital for the next three or four days and may experience sensory problems in his left hand for several months, Mr Chung said.

The attack will shock many outsiders because the US is South Korea’s closest ally, 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 Seoul over the still-fresh legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which is technically ongoing because it ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

A direct attack on a senior US official is unusual, but it represents a thread in South Korean society of sometimes extreme protests on both sides of the political divide. Regular small- to medium-sized demonstrations, often by activists seen as professional protesters, occur across the capital, often either by anti-US liberals who support closer reconciliation with the North or pro-government conservative groups who support the US and loathe Pyongyang.

Mr Obama called Mr Lippert after the attack to express his prayers for a speedy recovery, the White House said. AP