|
 Lippert, 42, was bleeding from deep wounds to his face and wrist
but was able to walk after the attack. Doctors said later his
condition was stable after "very successful" surgery that required
80 stitches in his face.
The assailant was caught and identified by police as 55-year-old Kim
Ki-jong. In 2010, Kim tried to attack the Japanese ambassador to
South Korea by throwing a piece of concrete and was given a
suspended jail term, according to police.
The attack was a protest against joint military exercises by South
Korean and U.S. troops, which Kim said interfered with
reconciliation between North and South Korea, according to police
following an interrogation.
Police are considering whether to charge him for attempted homicide,
a police official involved in the case said.
Witnesses and police said Kim used a small fruit knife in the
attack, which took place in a government arts center across the
street from the heavily guarded U.S. embassy on the South Korean
capital's main ceremonial thoroughfare.
"We strongly condemn this act of violence," U.S. State Department
spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
 U.S. President Barack Obama called Lippert to wish him a speedy
recovery, a White House official said.
The assailant was dressed in traditional Korean clothing and shouted
that North and South Korea should be reunited just before he
attacked Lippert. He also shouted that he opposed "war exercises", a
reference to the annual joint U.S.-South Korean military drills that
began this week.
Kim visited North Korea eight times from 2006 to 2007, where he
planted trees near the border city of Kaesong, a South Korean
Ministry of Unification official said.
"I carried out an act of terror," Kim shouted as he was pinned to
the floor by people at the event.
Kim said while in police custody he had acted alone. South Korea's
Yonhap news agency reported that Kim also said he was part of a
group that had cut and burned a U.S. flag on the embassy grounds in
Seoul in 1985.
Kim is a member of the group that supports Korean unification that
hosted the event, police said. He has also staged one-man protests
against Japan over disputed islands known as Dokdo in Korean and
Takeshima in Japanese, and, according to his blog, he led a protest
outside a U.S. army base in Seoul last November.
"The guy comes in ... He yells something, goes up to the ambassador
and slashes him in the face," witness Michael Lammbrau of the
Arirang Institute think-tank told Reuters.
Doctors at Yonsei University's Severance Hospital said they treated
Lippert for an 11-cm (4 inches) gash on the right side of his face
and a puncture wound on his left wrist, causing nerve damage that
was repaired. He will be hospitalized for three or four days, they
said.
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"Doing well&in great spirits!," Lippert tweeted after his surgery.
North Korea's official KCNA news agency described the attack as
"deserved punishment for the warmongering United States", calling it
"the knife of justice" that it said reflected the anger of South
Koreans opposed to the military exercises involving South Korean and
U.S. forces.
'WRESTLED TO THE GROUND'
Police were at the venue as part of routine operations but not at
the request of the U.S. embassy or the organizer, a police official
said.
Lammbrau said Kim shouted about Korean independence while he was
being restrained. "It sounded like he was anti-American,
anti-imperialist, that kind of stuff," he said.
"The ambassador fought him from his seat ... There was a trail of
blood behind him," Lammbrau said.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye, speaking in the United Arab
Emirates, called it an "attack on the South Korea-U.S. alliance".
Known for his open, informal style, Lippert is active on Twitter and
can often be seen walking his basset hound, Grigsby, in Seoul. His
wife recently gave birth to a son, who was given a Korean middle
name.
Thursday's event was hosted by the Korean Council for Reconciliation
and Cooperation. The group later issued a statement in which it
condemned the attack and apologized to the governments of the United
States and South Korea.
The annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises routinely provoke an
angry response from North Korea, which denounces them as a
preparation for war.
A South Korean defense ministry spokesman said the drills, due to
run for eight weeks, would continue as planned.
Lippert was a U.S. Senate aide to Obama and served in the U.S. Navy
in Afghanistan and Iraq, winning the Bronze Star. He was chief of
staff for former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel before taking up his
post in Seoul in November.
(Additional reporting by Sohee Kim, Seungyun Oh and Brian Kim in
SEOUL and Ian Simpson, Roberta Rampton and Peter Cooney in
WASHINGTON; Writing by Jack Kim and Tony Munroe; Editing by Paul
Tait, Robert Birsel)
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