{"id":105,"date":"2024-01-25T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T12:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/?p=105"},"modified":"2024-01-25T15:03:51","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T15:03:51","slug":"for-second-time-this-month-a-politician-is-attacked-in-south-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/for-second-time-this-month-a-politician-is-attacked-in-south-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"For Second Time This Month, a Politician Is Attacked in South Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A South Korean lawmaker was attacked in the head with a blunt object in Seoul on Thursday and taken to a hospital where she was being treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, according to her staff and physicians.<\/p>\n

Bae Hyunjin, of the ruling People Power Party, is the second South Korean politician to be physically assaulted while in public in less than a month.<\/p>\n

Yang Jaeyu, her chief of staff, said that the attacker approached her asking, \u201cAre you the People Power Party lawmaker Bae Hyunjin?\u201d twice before striking her with what he called a \u201crocklike object.\u201d<\/p>\n

Security camera footage shared by her office showed the assailant walking through a doorway closely behind her before repeatedly hitting the lawmaker as she fell over backward onto the floor and tried to resist the attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She was being treated at Soonchunhyang University Seoul Hospital, Han Dong-hoon, the leader of her party, told reporters Thursday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that should never have happened,\u201d he said, \u201cand the truth needs to come out, and the culprit needs to be brought to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Bae, 40, a former anchorwoman for South Korean broadcaster MBC, is in her first term as a lawmaker. She was elected in 2020. She briefly served as a spokeswoman for then-president-elect Yoon Suk Yeol after his election in 2022.<\/p>\n

Physicians at the hospital where she was being treated told reporters that she was conscious when she arrived at the emergency room, and that she had suffered a laceration of about a centimeter on her head, with no significant bleeding or fractures.<\/p>\n

The attacker was detained at the scene and being investigated by police, according to Yonhap, a South Korean news agency. The chief detective of the police station in Gangnam district, where the attack happened, could not be immediately reached.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On Jan. 2, a man\u00a0stabbed\u00a0Lee Jae-myung, the leader of South Korea\u2019s main opposition party, in the neck as the politician made his way through a crowd. Mr. Lee was taken to the hospital and released about eight days later. The suspect, who said he was politically motivated, was arrested and expected to be charged with attempted murder.<\/p>\n

In a statement on social media, Mr. Lee called Thursday\u2019s episode \u201cunbelievable\u201d and said, \u201cNo political terrorism of any kind is acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Park Jung-ha, the People Power Party\u2019s spokeswoman, said in a statement: \u201cIn these turbulent times of extreme politics and the politics of hate, we are deeply concerned by yet another act of violence and political terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attacks, just a few weeks apart against politicians on both sides of the political spectrum, could be an indication of the increasing divisions and rancor that have colored South Korean politics.<\/p>\n

Physical attacks on politicians have been a rare occurrence in South Korea. The highest-profile incident was a 2006 attack on then-opposition leader Park Geun-hye, a conservative politician who later went on to win the presidency. She was slashed in the face by a man who was a fervent critic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A South Korean lawmaker was attacked in the head with a blunt object in Seoul on Thursday and taken to a hospital where she was being treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, according to her staff and physicians. Bae Hyunjin, of the ruling People Power Party, is the second South Korean politician to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headlinegram.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}