Mark Lippert was filmed moments after the attack asking to be taken to hospital
A
militant Korean nationalist has slashed the face of the US ambassador to
South Korea at a breakfast meeting in Seoul, but the envoy was not
seriously hurt.
Mark Lippert, 42, was also cut on his left hand, with blood spattered over the breakfast table.
Security officers subdued the attacker, one pinning him down with a shoe on his neck, until he was arrested.
North Korea has described the attack as "just punishment for US warmongers".
The North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said he had delivered a "knife shower of justice".
The attacker, named as Kim Ki-jong, 55, appears to have
broken his ankle during the attack and was taken away on an ambulance
trolley after questioning.
South Korean police, who are in the process of obtaining
warrants to search his home, are seeking to establish whether he has
close ties with the North, the BBC's Stephen Evans reports from Seoul.
Mr Lippert had hospital treatment but later wrote in a
tweet: "Doing well and in great spirits... Will be back ASAP to advance US-ROK [Republic of Korea] alliance!"
US President Barack Obama called his ambassador to wish him "the very best for a speedy recovery", a US official said.
Analysis: Stephen Evans, BBC News, Seoul
Nobody believes that pro-North Korean groups represent a
majority of South Koreans but they are still a significant minority and
part of the political landscape.
In November, South Korea's constitutional court ordered that
the Unified Progressive Party be dissolved even though it had five
members elected to parliament. The authorities said the UPP posed a
threat to South Korean democracy. One of its leaders was jailed.
The counter-argument of the leftist nationalists is not so
much that they want to be ruled by Pyongyang or fall under a North
Korean system but that the American military presence in South Korea
perpetuates a division within one people - the Korean people.
The strong feelings of pro-Pyongyang activists become most
obvious when anti-Pyongyang activists launch balloons into the North
loaded with propaganda messages. The two sides confront each other, with
much jostling and shouting. There was a small pro-US demonstration
after the attack on the ambassador but some on the streets of the
capital said they applauded it.
The US state department said it strongly condemned the incident
which South Korean President Park Guen-hye described as an "attack on
the South Korea-US alliance".
A small group of South Koreans held a protest against the
attack outside the hospital where Mr Lippert was treated, waving
placards which read "Mark Lippert, Cheer up!" and "Korea-US relationship
is solid".
Eighty stitches
The attack happened at about 07:40 (22:40 GMT Wednesday), as the ambassador was at a performing arts centre in central Seoul.
It took 80 stitches to close the ambassador's facial wound,
which was 11 cm (just more than 4 in) long and 3 cm deep, doctors said.
This photo shows Mark Lippert at the table just before the attack
Blood lay spattered over the table after the assault
The attacker was quickly overpowered
Suspected attacker Kim Ki-jong was taken to hospital
The cut did not affect his nerves or salivary gland, hospital spokesman Chung Nam-sik said.
Lew Dae-hyun, a plastic surgeon at Yonsei University's
Severance Hospital, said Mr Lippert had narrowly escaped having much
more serious injuries.
"If the cut had been one to two centimetres deeper than it is
now, it could have damaged the carotid on the upper neck, which could
have turned it into a serious emergency situation," he said. "It could
have been life-threatening."
Kim Ki-jong's militant past
- In 1985, was part of a group that cut and
burned a US flag on the embassy grounds in Seoul, according to South
Korea's Yonhap news agency
- Visited North Korea at least six times in 2006-07, reportedly planting trees near the border city of Kaesong
- In 2007, set himself on fire in front of the
presidential office in Seoul, asking for an inquiry into a rape that
allegedly took place at his office in 1988 (Yonhap)
- When in 2010 he hurled concrete at the then
Japanese envoy, Toshinori Shigeie, it was the first assault on a foreign
ambassador in South Korea; he received a suspended jail term
- In 2011, he tried to erect a memorial altar for the late North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, in the heart of Seoul (Yonhap)
- Has also staged one-man protests against Japan over an island dispute (Reuters)
'Stretcher interrogation'
The assailant was interrogated three hours on his stretcher
before being taken to hospital, the Yonhap news agency reports, quoting
police.
"We considered the gravity of the issue and that the act could be seen as terrorism," an unnamed prosecution official said.
Ahead of his attack, Mr Kim had reportedly shouted: "South
and North Korea should be reunified!" and condemned the current annual
military exercises held jointly by South Korea and the US.
North Korea has described the exercises - which involve more
than 200,000 troops - as a rehearsal for an invasion and has vowed
retaliation.
A small group of Koreans wished the US ambassador well at a rally outside the hospital where he was treated
A candlelit vigil for the injured envoy was held on Thursday evening in Seoul
The 1950-53 war which split the Korean peninsula ended in an armistice, with neither side able to claim outright victory.
No peace treaty has ever been signed and the sides regularly accuse each other of violating the agreement.
Mr Lippert - a former US assistant secretary of defence - was appointed ambassador to South Korea in 2014.
His wife gave birth in the country, and the couple gave their son a Korean middle name, Associated Press news agency reports.
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