On Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert was slashed across the face while giving a speech in Seoul. The attacker, a 55-year-old known agitator, Kim Ki-Jong, indicated his motivation for the attack was to decriy the continued division of the Korean Peninsula. The wounds to Lippert, in addition to his face where he needed 80 stitches to close the gash, also extended to his arm where he required surgery to repair the damaged tendons and nerves.
"South and North Korea should be reunified!" shouted Kim Ki-Jong during the attack. He was taken into custody. Authorities in South Korea have indicated they are familiar with Kim, and the band of hard-core activists he is a member of who use violence to highlight their grievances. An anonymous police official said that in 2010, Kim through a piece of concrete at the Japanese ambassador in Seoul, which missed the ambassador, but did hit his secretary. At the time, Kim was sentenced to a three-year suspended prison term for that attack. The claimed motive by Kim at the time was a small group of items occupied by South Korea, but claimed by Japan. In 2007 Kim threatened to light himself on fire during a protest.
Lipper is reported as doing well, and in high spirits.
The attack against the U.S. Ambassador follows a volley of threats from North Korea against the United States, the most recent being sparked by the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises (we called the exercises "Team Spirit" when I was in the Navy). South Korean agitators have also made mention of the exercises in their protests. The exercises are defensive in nature, and are simply a joint training exercise.
The attack against the U.S. Ambassador follows a volley of threats from North Korea against the United States, the most recent being sparked by the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises (we called the exercises "Team Spirit" when I was in the Navy). South Korean agitators have also made mention of the exercises in their protests. The exercises are defensive in nature, and are simply a joint training exercise.
Each year North Korea reacts to the exercises, this year vowing to wage a "merciless, sacred war" against the United States.
"Nuclear weapons are not a monopoly of the US," the ruling party's official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, warned in an editorial carried by the state KCNA news agency.
"The US is seriously mistaken if it thinks its mainland is safe," the editorial added.
North Korea "will wage a merciless sacred war against the US now that the latter has chosen confrontation", the Rodong Sinmun said.
North Korea offered a moratorium on nuclear testing if this year's joint drills were cancelled, but the offer was rejected by Washington, and viewed it as an "implicit threat" that North Korea will carry out a fourth nuclear test.
This is the first time North Korea's threats included a missile strike on the Continental United States. It is believed North Korea possesses 10 to 16 nuclear weapons fashioned from either plutonium or weapons-grade uranium, and may have an arsenal of 100 nuclear weapons by 2020.
Following the slashing of Ambassador Lippert, the leadership in North Korea praised the attack, calling them "knife slashes of justice" through the state-controlled media, adding they were "a deserved punishment on war maniac U.S.," indicating that the drills have brought Korea to the brink of war.
The United States, in addition to the annual training exercise with South Korea, have 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the South as a deterrent to the North. North Korea claims the presence of the troops is one of the causes of the continued divide between the two Koreas.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
U.S. ambassador to South Korea Wounded in Slashing - NY Daily News
North Korea Vows Merciless War Against U.S. - Yahoo News
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