The US ambassador to South Korea is recovering in the hospital after being attacked by a knife-wielding man in Seoul. The assailant apparently shouted pro-reunification slogans.
The US ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert, underwent treatment for two and a half hours by plastic and orthopedic surgeons in Seoul on Thursday, with his condition described as stable.
Lippert was attacked earlier in the day by a man, identified as 55-year-old Kim Ki-jong, at a breakfast function in the South Korean capital. Witnesses say Kim, wearing traditional Korean dress, lunged at Lippert across a table with a 25-centimeter (10 inch) long paring knife, slashing his face and hand.
News agency Yonhap TV showed men in suits wrestle Kim to the ground, while 42-year-old Lippert was rushed to hospital in a police car waiting outside the building.
Video footage shows the US envoy leaving the conference holding one hand to his right cheek, his clothes covered in blood.
At a televised briefing, Severance Hospital’s Chung Nam-sik said it took 80 stitches to close the facial wound, which was 11 centimeters (4 inches) long and 3 centimeters (1 inch) deep.
Chung said if the wound to his cheek had been lower it may have severed his carotid artery, a potentially “life-threatening” injury.
The hospital also said it had treated damage done to sensory nerves in Lippert’s hand.
Lippert was expected to stay in the hospital for the next three or four days.
He tweeted from his hospital bed that he was “doing well.”