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THE US AMBASSADOR to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was recovering from surgery today after being slashed on his face and arm in Seoul by a blade-wielding activist opposed to ongoing US-Korean military drills.
The United States condemned the “act of violence” which left the ambassador bleeding profusely and saw him rushed to hospital where his condition was described as stable after 2-1/2 hours of treatment by plastic and orthopaedic surgeons.
Witnesses described how a man armed with a 25-centimetre (10-inch) paring knife had lunged across a table and attacked Lippert at a breakfast function in central Seoul.
The assailant, dressed in traditional Korean clothes and identified as Kim Ki-Jong, 55, was immediately wrestled to the ground and taken into police custody.
During the assault, Kim screamed a slogan in favour of reunifying the divided Korean peninsula, and later shouted his opposition to joint US-SKorea military exercises that began on Monday.
He was a known political activist who had been handed a two-year suspended sentence in 2010 for throwing a rock at the then Japanese ambassador to Seoul.
Video footage showed Lippert, 42, being rushed from the breakfast event and bundled into a police car, one hand pressing a cloth to his bleeding right cheek, and his other hand and clothes smeared with blood.
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Stupid comment, no justification in slashing that man and scarring him for life,he’s just trying to earn a living like anyone else
Well the fact you’re sitting online this morning reading stories is a freedom story.
Yes thank you USA that I’m not speaking Russian or German
You can thank the Russians you’re not speaking German.
The Russians were so benevolent to the Polish, Czechs, Latvians etc after the war. Those Eastern European countries really flourished and grew under Russian control. Their personal and political freedoms were an envy if the world.
Charles I cant help noticing your not speaking Irish either.
True Peter, the Russians stopped Germany,
But lets face it…only for an American presence the Russians would have kept rolling west.
“True Peter, the Russians stopped Germany,”
Very simplistic view which is actually not true. The American’s contributed greatly to the war against Germany. Blockades of Germany by US and British naval forces and the invasion of Italy starved Germany of vital resources and manpower. The massive American bombing campaigns ruined Germany’s ability to replace vital materiel losses and the invasion of France diverted key resources from the Eastern Front.
This is before we touch on the fact that the Soviet industry was so concentrated on producing combat vehicles that the Red Army relied on the US to provide the logistical supplies and vehicles they desperately needed. The Red Army would not have been able to sustain the manpower needed to take on Germany effectively without the help of the US.
Without Lend Lease giving Russians thousands of American trucks; the USSR never would have been able to provide the logistics for the massive operations that typically characterised Soviet military doctrine post Stalingrad.
In the end, Eastern Europe just exchanged one brutal dictatorship for another. That’s the reasons why places like the Baltic countries don’t consider Soviet the 1944 liberation (who previously annexed and deported hundreds of thousands of their countrymen in 1940) as a liberation; more rather another tragic by product of Soviet rule.
No john. What you have to understand is the US foster and nurture the conditions that have people wanting to get out. They do this via fomenting
Totally agree. They have no business teaming up with South Korea to attack the North. This activist wants peace not more war! America doesn’t do peace…. Shouldn’t be stabbing people but least now the world can see what us is doing.
Read your history, if it were not for the Russian convoys and 10s of 1000s of allied sailers lives lost, plus 10000 of thousands more maimed and damaged from their experiences from USA AND UK carrying arms and war materials to them during WW2 Russia were powerless.
The joint actions of ALL the allies were needed to defeat Hitlers Germany, including Russia.
The post war years where Russia exerted control over the countries they “liberated” for almost 50 years with their Iron curtain enforced with force of arms does them no credit.
Their actions in Ukraine today is a legacy of that post war period.
“They have no business teaming up with South Korea to attack the North.”
North Korea and South Korea still exist in a state of war with one another, a war which the North started. The US is there because the South Koreans asked for their protection and continue to do so.
@Peter McGlynn
“You can thank the Russians you’re not speaking German.”
And you can thank the Americans that you’re not speaking Russian.
Jane, you are ignorant of the U.S. And South Korean relationship regarding North Korea. A Quick read up on it will educate you.
Ya because North Korea is such a peaceful nation and their citizens enjoy enviable freedom
The yanks know better than to mess with the Asians.
Did they not kern their lesson in Vietnam?
I wonder if all the US apologists on here are add quick to condemn them for butchering and starving hundreds of thousands of innocent iraqi men women and children. I doubt it.
You people are sick in the head. The hypocrisy is Pathetic.
This is the problem around the world, people are living in the history and killing, instead of learning and moving forward, making things better, respecting people views,
Joe – Team Murrica for life yo. If you are so opposed to America, why do you support them by purchasing American products
Would these civilians be the poor innocents cutting journalists heads off in the desert . And before you start spouting about America coveting oil wtf do you think ISIL covet. At least you can walk down an American street in relative safety no matter your religious beliefs but as a Christian if I walked into some of these so called Muslim countries I’m pretty sure I’d end up on cnn wearing an orange jumpsuit with a masked coward about to decapitate me.
Exactly. Why do people use the Internet if they hate America? ? Was in not developed there and thought of there. Is your pc bot using tech made there much of which was of military importance to beat these socialists fools. Is your machine not running windows,android, ios
All American companies. So in fact anti Americans to avoid being hypocritical should live in houses with no tv or Internet. Should avoid cars and aircraft.
Politics is not as black and white as yous are all making it out to be. If it was as simple as bad guys versus good guys, then wars would be very rare and they’d be very easily sorted. The US, Russia, Germany and both Koreas have all done some awful things, but they’ve also done good things. Not supporting the foreign policy of Russia or the US does not mean you hate Russians or Americans. You can love German culture, but hate their whole Nazi past.
You shouldn’t look be looking at which side is right or wrong, because none of them are. International relations is complicated.
Russia stopped Germany, technically, but realistic it was Hiroshima, a few more month of madness if the Russians wouldn’t have delivered, the Americans would have decimated Berlin and any other town until the Germans surrender. Crude reality. I thank the Russians I don’t speak German and I thank the Americans for not speaking Russian or German.
Saul, the Germans surrendered in Europe on May 7th, 1945…..the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombings did not happen until August 6th and 9th
That’s why I’ve said ” a few more months” if the Russians wouldn’t have succeeded by the end of 1945. the Americans would have finished once and for all. SO the Americans had the capabilities of winning eventually. That’s my point.
What’s wrong with speaking Russian or German? People who spoke these languages helped make the U.S. what it is today.
The most sensible comments on this subject!
I thank Dia I speak gaeilge !
English is such a dyslexic tongue !
All hail Ogham who first delivered writing to the Irish !
You wouldn’t be on here bitchin and moaning all the time about a crap country where things don’t work if you were speaking German ;-)
Well russia would not have survived if not for the convoys.
In the end Germany would have been smashed under a mushroom cloud.
So no the ussr did not win the war. They joined the winning team. But accepted they had the most losses. Again that’s because of not being ready. Without help from Britain and the USA and if Hitler decided to push the ussr would have fallen apart. Who knows this might have been right thing to do let Germany destroyed the socialist evil of the ussr then destroy Germany.
What people seem to forget is that at the very start of the war Hitler had no real plans to go to war in the West. His main aim was in the East (Lebensraum). If the West had decided not to intervene after the Polish invasion, Germany would have thrown its full military might against Russia and we have seen just how close they came to taking Moscow even with half their army tied up in Western Europe and North Africa. The Russian Supreme Military Commander Marshall Georgy Zhukov stated in his biography that when the Wehrmacht were just 20 miles from Moscow the Soviet Union would’t have lasted more than a few weeks if the Germans had carried on and taken Moscow. And that was with only half their army. It is accepted by Military historians that if the entire German Army and their allies had thrown their full weight at the Soviet Union it would have been over before the first winter set in.
Agreed mick. Now to give the Russians credit when they finally got their act together they were serious force.
General patton after the fall of Germany wanted eisenhower and truman to go all the way and finish the soviets as he saw what was coming. Never happened but the combined raf and usaf used effectively to destroy Germany would have done the same against russia. But the bloodshed had to end somewhere. The problem was it didn’t end. Stalin killed millions and also it was fought out in every proxy war after.
Manufactured in China.
The US had the bomb alone for several years. If the US wanted a couple of strikes against Soviet cities with the 3rd threatened for Moscow Stalin would have captitulated and withdrawn his armies back to their original 1937 borders.
#bringbackfrank
Frank who?
The mad lad
I must admit, you don’t realise how much character he brought to the Journal until he’s gone.
Frank/ablitive’s crazy ass notions and numbers really used to brighten my day. If I told him my cat coughed up a hair ball, he’s tell me that the hairball had been planted by Barack Obama on the 7th day of the 7th month of the 7th year of the cats life.
Actually, where is Frank? I hope isnt isnt found to having acidentally fallen into a suitcase and inadvertently zipped it back up. It does happen to those who know to much.
Frank McCarthy is his name. He is on Facebook. Send him a message to come back unless it’s a fake account.
Barred for sharing his opinion maybe?
God bless free speech.
“Je Suis Frank”
He kept saying something “big” was going to happen on the 17 of February (according to his numbers anyway) but he hasn’t posted here since a day or two before that date.
You really do miss him around here!
Frank died from exhaustion after greasing his weasel once to much
Frank may have run out of dates to blame on 12.12.12, we may have to wait until 1.1.2001 for a return visit I fear
1.1.2101
His name was Frank McCarthy
His name was Frank McCarthy
His name was Frank McCarthy
Solny – even by your incredibly low commentary standards, to suggest that anyone would describe slashing someone with a knife as a peaceful protest is moronic in the extreme. Stop being such a sad sack all the time.
Some here would refer to such an attack as a peaceful protest. They could justify such a claim with the usual mantra prefix ‘what about’.
True a lot of f.g tds got slashed, luckily for them it was in the dail bar, unluckily for us they then drove home.
Lyon’s heroes in the shankill butchers slashed people as a protest against equality.
He spent 2.5 hours receiving plastic surgery. He was lucky it didn’t happen in Ireland, he would have spent 2.5 hours on a trolley, before somebody stuck a plaster on it and told him to go home.
Can we get a price check on them there plasters, stat.
Decadent capitalist will learn that North Korea is best Korea!
Play the ball not the man!
@Jane nothing wrong with criticising the US. American foreign policy has been a disaster and their domestic politics is often ridiculous. On the other hand Joe’s comment seems to suggest that a violent attack on a diplomat is acceptable. Also I’m not sure what he means by saying the U.S. has held back the progress of mankind, perhaps he’ll take the time to explain what seems to be a rather hyperbolic statement.
I think we can all agree that American foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster in recent times but the kind of inane nonsense Joe spouts just emphasises the abandon people in his position have for facts such as North Korea invading South Korea etc.
arrest? a quick double tap to the chest and all the problems are sorted
To be fair, I’d put money on it that getting gunned down was his plan. A Korean “patriot” dying for his dream of a united Korea without US involvement would send a strong message in his mind and would be lapped up by North Korean media.
Just have think what would have happened to him if he had slashed the Chinese Ambassador in North Korea!!! He would be fed to the Dogs alive.
This isnt what happens when you’re responsible for holding back the progress of mankind. The United Stasi of America cant fool people any longer, the world is awake.
Speaks volumes about the ‘Anti-US No Matter What’ crowd when they support a tyrant like Putin and can’t even bring themselves to condemn an attack on an ambassador.
Joe, why do thousands of people want to get the hell out of tyrannical countries and live in places like the US and Europe. I think you just want to see the world burn. Hard lefty heads like you have nothing to offer society but chaos..
I think you should run your guff by the people of south korea first. Maybe do a quick compare and contrast exercise with living standards in North Korea.
Ah sure north Korea is the US fault as well.
Do you think you are helping or harming the cause of Palestinian statehood when you use their flag beside a comment like that?
North Korea is the poster child for our ‘No Austerity’ comrades.
Why has it become almost blasphemous here to criticise the US?!
“Why has it become almost blasphemous here to criticise the US?!”
It’s hardly blasphemy here to criticise the US, however the way it is done is usually ridiculous. The US is criticised here usually to deflect from stories of wrong-doing by Russia or they’re lambasted on stories where American citizens are assaulted as in this article.
Those who criticise the US rarely criticise (or openly support) the likes of Putin or men like Kim Ki-Jong
@Jason, its the same crowd who can see no wrong in the Palestinians its always Israels fault even though there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
America and Israel are far from perfect but once their name is on a headline the usual suspects swarm to blame them for all the worlds ills.
Maybe they want out to escape another US invasion?
It’s what the cool kids were doing around 2002 and 2003. Blaming America is so mainstream.
Absolutely disgusting what that thug did!! No one deserves to get their face slashed, and to those who condone this behaviour should really have a good look at themselves.
That’s nothing compared to what happens on a Friday night in our local
sure it’s only a little scratch, he’ll be grand
The people most opposed to north korea gaining freedom from a batshit-crazy political system and ruling family is south korea itself. They would be swamped with north koreans flooding south looking for a better life (and food)
Yeah, it’s not like South Korea is a successful market economy with a large manufacturing base that would benefit greatly from the North’s natural resources and cheap labour. Did you leave your brain at home today?
Was anyone else bored to tears with that news reader?????
…..
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