US envoy’s attacker angry over 2 Koreas

SEOUL—The man who staged a shock attack on the US ambassador to South Korea is a convicted, maverick political activist whose blog writings display a profound anger toward “foreign powers,” like the United States and Japan.

Kim Ki-jong, 55, was known to police after having been handed a two-year suspended sentence in 2010 for hurling a rock at the then Japanese ambassador to South Korea.

He runs a small activist group known as “Our Backyard” which has a strong nationalist agenda, and pushes for close engagement with North Korea in order to reunify the divided peninsula.

South Korea has a number of militant activist groups that inhabit the left- and right-wing margins of the political spectrum and regularly engage in vocal and sometimes violent public protests.

As he was wrestled to the ground after his knife attack on Ambassador Mark Lippert, Kim shouted slogans against the annual US-South Korea joint military exercises which kicked off on Monday.

The drills, known as Foal Eagle and Key Resolve, always trigger a surge in tensions with North Korea, which condemns them as rehearsals for invasion.

“I plotted the whole thing alone for 10 days … I made the sacrifice to stop Key Resolve,” Kim told police, according to the Yonhap news agency.

In his postings on his group’s blog, Kim complained that the military exercises were blocking all efforts to resume a North-South Korea dialogue.

“I’m so saddened by this reality in which… we keep fighting against each other while being swayed by plots by foreign powers,” he wrote.

A Unification Ministry official said that Kim had visited North Korea at least half a dozen times between 2006 and 2007.

He also tried to erect a memorial in Seoul to the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il after his death in late 2011, but was blocked by police and conservative activists.

Pictures on the blog showed images of Kim protesting in front of the US and Japanese embassies in Seoul over a number of issues.

He also ran campaigns to denounce Japan in its territorial dispute with South Korea over small Seoul-controlled islets in the Sea of Japan (East Sea).