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Bag with knife used to attack US envoy Mark Lippert. Photo: Kyodo

Attack on US ambassador renews focus on contentious South Korean security law

Efforts by South Korean police to charge a nationalist over a knife attack on the US ambassador have renewed debate about the use of a state security act as a political weapon and an attempt to gloss over the country's security shortcomings.

South Korea

Efforts by South Korean police to charge a nationalist over a knife attack on the US ambassador have renewed debate about the use of a state security act as a political weapon and an attempt to gloss over the country's security shortcomings.

Kim Ki-jong, 55, could face charges including attempted murder over the March 5 attack as well as violating the National Security Act, a 67-year-old statute that critics say has long outlived its purpose.

Many contend it is used by conservative governments to gag liberal political opponents by painting them as supporters of North Korea.

Kim, who has a long history of violent protest, made seven trips to North Korea between 1999 and 2007. Police seized literature at his home they described as "beneficial to the enemy" as part of their investigations.

"During interrogation, he said there are no leaders in the South comparable to Kim Il-sung," Kim Cheol-joon, a police official leading the investigation, told a briefing on Friday, referring to the North Korean state founder.

Critics say trying to charge Kim under the security law politicises the case and attempts to distract from possible shortcomings by police.

US Ambassador Mark Lippert was slashed in the face, a wound requiring 80 stitches, while he attended a forum on Korean reunification at a government theatre across the street from the heavily guarded US embassy.

The attack shocked Koreans but quickly turned into a highly charged debate that highlights an ideological divide between conservatives and liberals in South Korea over the North.

President Park Geun-hye and the conservative party's leader labelled the case an attack against South Korea's alliance with the United States. Lippert's face was slashed days after annual US-South Korean military drills began, exercises the North routinely calls preparation for war.

Under the National Security Law, first enacted in 1948 and last revised in 2012, possessing literature supporting entities that threaten state security is subject to prosecution and two or more years in jail. North Korea is considered such an entity.

"The clause on praising and encouraging anti-state entities is the most problematic, and the most politically abused one," said political analyst Yu Chang-seon, referring to the part of the statute that the police want to apply to Kim.

Kim has yet to be charged formally under the security law, but police have been focusing on his possible links to North Korea.

"The Lippert attack has turned into a security crackdown," said Lee Kwang-cheol, a defence attorney and a member of the liberal group Lawyers for a Democratic Society.

"This is being handled as a political case and (politicians) are giving some kind of guideline to the police," Lee said.

The attack on Lippert is the latest in a string of recent applications of the National Security law.

In December, the Supreme Court upheld a sedition conviction against a former parliamentarian and member of a party that had already been outlawed for pro-North activities.

 

Japan-S Korea rift hurting US national interests: ex-diplomat Kakumi Kobayashi

A former senior US diplomat for Asia has expressed concern that strained ties between Washington's two East Asian allies - Japan and South Korea - are hurting American national interests.

Kurt Campbell, former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said during an event in Washington on Friday that the US government should make clear that "this ongoing set of affairs is hurting the United States, hurting our role in Asia".

Campbell suggested the absence of close US involvement had contributed to the soured relations between Tokyo and Seoul that stem from differences over Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula before and during the second world war.

Campbell, who heads the Centre for a New American Security think tank, also called on the US government to enhance its efforts from "mediation" to a level that can be described as "facilitation" to help Japan and South Korea mend fences.

He also questioned the attitude of both Japan and South Korea, pointing to their lack of efforts to reactivate dialogue and improve relations.

"You have a South Korean leader saying I will meet at any time" not with the Japanese leader but the North Korean leader, and Japanese diplomats who only say they are "exhausted" by their South Korean counterparts, Campbell said. He did not mention the issue of so-called comfort women, including those from the peninsula, who were forced to work at wartime Japanese brothels. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye have failed to meet one-on-one since they took office in 2012 and 2013, respectively.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Attack on envoy renews focus on security law
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