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Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung answers questions from the press after touring Daehang Observatory on Busan’s Gadeok Island on Jan. 2. Moments later, he was stabbed by a man in his 60s wielding a knife. (Yonhap)

By Park Chan-su, editorial writer

The stabbing of Lee Jae-myung in Busan was shocking. According to information released by the police, the criminal said he stabbed Lee in the neck with the intention of killing him.

The attempted killing of the leader of Korea’s main opposition party is the kind of thing that might have been done by secret agents seeking to eliminate political enemies during the dictatorial period or the anarchy that followed Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. It’s astounding that such a thing could take place in today’s Korean society, where people have come to accept that power changes hands through elections.

An act of terror against a politician doesn’t necessarily signify the retreat of democracy. Park Geun-hye, then head of the Grand National Party, was slashed with a box cutter in May 2006, but later Koreans demonstrated how much democracy had advanced by bringing down the president (ironically, Park herself) through peaceful candlelit rallies.

But there’s another respect in which this incident sets alarm bells ringing. While democracy depends on certain norms and principles that take years to develop, those alone aren’t enough to control political attitudes and actions. We also need common sense and consensus to fill in the blanks, but it seems that at some point, those have evaporated.

For example, it’s important for the president to hold town halls for the public, but President Yoon Suk-yeol has never directly sat down with the public and answered their questions since August 2022. There’s no legal requirement for the president to hold a New Year’s press conference, but declining to do so instantaneously undermines communication, which is a key element of politics.

By the same token, it would be difficult to prohibit physical attacks and bodily threats against political opponents with laws about elections and political parties. Nevertheless, Koreans have long agreed that while criticizing unfavored politicians in speech or writing is acceptable, stabbing and other forms of violence are not. There has been an understanding that such behavior would damage political and social stability.

That agreement, that understanding, is even more important for the operation of a full-fledged democracy. But such values are frequently being disregarded.

The previous presidential election was often characterized as a choice of the lesser of two unappealing evils. That was because both the ruling and opposition parties sought to gain the upper hand by running negative campaigns that demonized the other side.

After winning by a hair’s breadth, Yoon ought to have taken steps to mend the tears in the national fabric. But instead he has doubled down on conflict and division with a series of attacks that have lasted for much more than a year now. As one glaring example, he hasn’t had a single serious conference about governing the country with the leader of the main opposition party, which controls a majority of seats in the National Assembly.

Such circumstances tend to weaken the guardrails that would otherwise prevent people with an unhealthy obsession with politics from resorting to violence. While the attack in Busan may have been unexpected and personal in nature, it derived from the undesirable fact that the rancor that characterized the presidential election has come to dominate day-to-day politics.

I suppose that People Power Party interim leader Han Dong-hoon was being serious when he asked supporters who described Lee’s stabbing as “political theater” to imagine that he was the one who had been stabbed. Han may be the one who’s most worried about how this incident will impact the general elections in April.

One need only consider how the stabbing of Grand National Party leader Park Geun-hye shortly before the regional election in 2006 helped her party win by a landslide. Park’s first question upon awaking from surgery was highly symbolic: “What about Daejeon?”

Prior to this, Han hadn’t regarded Lee Jae-myung as his political rival. Instead, he’d considered him a criminal, someone who needed to be removed from politics. As plausible as the charges against him may seem, Lee remains the leader of Korea’s main opposition party, and as such, the decent thing would be to let him remain free while he’s on trial under the principle of the presumption of innocence.

Presumably, Han submitted a bill to strip Lee of his parliamentary immunity and spoke so long about Lee’s presumed guilt before the National Assembly because he regarded Lee as his enemy.

What Korean politics needs is the willingness to engage in dialogue with parties even when we disagree with their policies and platforms and to recognize their right to run the country or control the National Assembly when they win an election.

When Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa in 1994, he didn’t exact any revenge against the all-white government that had imprisoned him for 27 years. When asked how it was possible not to hate a government that had kept him in prison, Mandela said, “Hating clouds the mind. Leaders cannot afford to hate.”

Yoon and his ruling party need to stop viewing the head of the main opposition party as a criminal.

I also hope that Lee, even in his hospital bed, will keep the hatred and rage that are already overwhelming Korean society from getting any worse. If the unfortunate incident in Busan does something to help push Korean politics in the right direction, that will be because of Lee’s personal effort.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]