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For the first time in the 60-year political history of the Republic of Korea, the leader of the major opposition party has suffered a terror attack in broad daylight in the middle of Seoul. Grand National Party chairwoman Park Guen-hye suffered an 11-cm long cut to her face from ear to jaw at an election rally in Shinchon, Seoul, when a man in his 50s slashed her with a box cutter. The cut required over 60 stitches. A hospital official said if nearby major blood vessels had been cut, Park might have been in critical condition. She reportedly needs at least a week in hospital and will be unable to speak normally for several months. She will have to cancel all campaigning. Having to live with an ugly scar on, she must also have suffered a great psychological shock.
Police suspect that the assailant committed the crime out of a sense of grievance against society over his imprisonment for 14 years and four months. He is said to have caused a disturbance at another GNP political event opposing the controversial private school reform law in December. We can assume he deliberately aimed at Park. Another man in his 50s, who was caught after abusing Park and throwing away a microphone at the same rally, is a member of the ruling Uri Party, the party has admitted.
The first order of business must be to get to the bottom of the incident. The prosecution and police must investigate if the assailant acted alone or if there were others behind him, and if there was a political motive. They must also clarify how and why the Uri Party member was arrested.
But the more fundamental question is how the country got into this state. The attack on Park is reminiscent of the chaos in Seoul streets during the latter half of the 1940s, when terror was rampant amid the ideological conflicts between Right and Left. Despite the passage of 60 years, things are not very different today. Ordinary citizens as well as the political community are engaged in an undeclared war between "them" and "us" depending on what they think, what they have, where they live, where they hail from and what schooling they received.
All is the outcome of the administration's persistent attempts to divide us. The government has made ordinary citizens afraid of being assaulted by "them," and those who do not think like the administration may feel that the attack on Park justifies their worst fears. The social order is coming apart at the seams. What is the government thinking?
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