A stranger struck a conservative South Korean lawmaker in the back of the head Thursday as the lawmaker was walking on a street in Seoul, the Washington Post reported.
Lawmaker Bae Hyun-jin was walking in the Gangnam district when the stranger approached her and asked, “Are you lawmaker Bae Hyun-jin?” before hitting her on the head, according to the report. The lawmaker was reportedly bleeding but conscious and was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The male suspect was reportedly apprehended and taken into custody at the Gangnam Police Station.
Bae, 40, is a member of the conservative People Power Party, a minority party in parliament and the party of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, the report noted. Bae was elected to the National Assembly in 2020 following a career in television broadcasting, the Post noted. (RELATED: Video Appears To Show South Korean Opposition Leader Getting Stabbed In The Neck During Tour Site Visit)
People watch a television screen showing a news broadcast with a closed-circuit television footage of the scene where South Korean ruling People Power Party’s lawmaker Bae Hyun-jin being assaulted in Gangnam district, at a railway station in Seoul on January 25, 2024. (Photo by JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images)
The attack is the second known attack on a politician in South Korea this month. A 66-year-old man passing as a party supporter approached Lee Jae-myung, a prominent South Korean political figure and leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, which holds a majority in the National Assembly, and stabbed him in the neck with a knife on Jan. 2. The stabbing was caught on video. The suspect attacked Lee out of fear that he might one day become president and faces a charge of attempted murder, according to The New York Times
The attack on Bae was similar to that on liberal lawmaker Song Young-gil. An elderly man struck him in the head with a blunt object during a campaign rally in Seoul in 2022, the Post noted.
The attacks, though reportedly rare on the South Korean political landscape, highlighted the country’s increasingly divisive and bitter politics in the run-up to April’s parliamentary elections.