The attack on Lee and the polarization of politics in Seoul
The South Korean opposition leader hit yesterday morning remains in intensive care after delicate surgery to reconstruct his jugular. Meanwhile, South Korea is once again questioning the violence against political leaders, less than 100 days before parliamentary elections.
Seoul (AsiaNews) - Lee Jae-Myung, politician belonging to the Democratic Party and "rival" of President Yoon in the 2022 elections, remains hospitalized in intensive care at the Seoul National University Hospital, stabbed in the neck yesterday morning while he was in the port city of Busan for the inspection of a site for the construction of a new airport.
Lee was hit in the neck by a 66-year-old man identified as Kim: among the crowd of supporters, he approached him with the excuse of an autograph and then attacked him - with the aim of killing him - with an 18 centimeter knife .
Lee underwent delicate surgery: “The dagger severed the jugular vein and he underwent vascular reconstruction surgery, which included the removal of blood clots,” the party spokesperson reported.
The police are preparing to issue an arrest warrant against the assailant - whose motives are still unclear - following his arrest yesterday immediately after his act. In any case, the serious episode has brought the issue of the excesses of political polarization in South Korea back to the fore, just 100 days before the vote for the parliamentary elections.
Lee Jae-Myung - recently under investigation on corruption charges for granting special favors to a real estate developer in the Baekhyeon-dong neighborhood and sending - via the Ssangbangwool Group - 8 million dollars to North Korea - is not the only South Korean politician to have suffered a violent attack.
In recent years, several cases of assault have been remembered, including that of Lee's predecessor, Song Young-Gil, who in 2022 was attacked in Seoul by an elderly man who hit him with a hammer, and that of former president Park Geun-Gil herself. Hye who in 2006 (a few years before her mandate) was stabbed while participating in a demonstration.
The strong polarization of the South Korean political landscape is also attested by a 2021 Pew Research Center survey which placed Seoul in first place among the most economically advanced countries in the world in terms of political divergence, with the same score as the United States.
The figures of Yoon and Lee are a very clear example of this: in the 2022 elections Lee was defeated against the People Power Party by less than 1% of the votes, obtaining 47.83%, and presenting a political program almost diametrically opposed to that of his opponent.
South Korea is a relatively young democracy (it was born in 1987) in a country marked by sudden, violent and polarizing political changes that have characterized its history over the last century: just think of the consequences of the Cold War and the First of May.
But the political changes are compunded by social revolutions resulting from rapid industrial and technological transformations, which create deep fault lines among the population and require often conflicting political solutions.
However, although we are witnessing a growing polarization of political ideologies within parties, public opinion, at least until 2020, presented a very different situation. A study by the Korean Economic Institute that uses data obtained from surveys carried out from 2004 to 2020 shows that the majority of the South Korean population actually holds centrist opinions.
While a survey by the National Election Commission and Gallup Korea, carried out in 2020, revealed that for 40.5% of the electorate the main choice factors are linked to characteristics such as the candidate's personal traits, moral integrity and skills rather than to political programs.
The relevance of these aspects is also evident from the public response to corruption cases, both the investigations against Lee Jae-Myung and the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye.
Attacks like the one against Lee and other politicians, however, suggest a South Korean public that is much more biased than what appears from the polls. An explanation for the phenomenon was offered by the Korea Herald as early as 2021, underlining the weight of social media and the digital world, where the most extremist opinions resound and are continually fueled, thus also influencing the process of forming a political identity and giving space to those with more extremist opinions.
Furthermore, those who prove to be active online also tend to be more politically present even in real demonstrations, compared to those who have more moderate opinions and who would seem to constitute the majority of the population.
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