Seoul, South Korea: South Korean opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung was stabbed in the neck on Tuesday with what "looked like a knife", news agency AFP reported.
People rushed to help as the 59-year-old collapsed to the ground with one man pressing a handkerchief on Lee's neck.
He was attacked while walking amid journalists after visiting the site of a new airport in the port city of Busan.
South Korean television channels showed a man in front of him attacking him in the neck and Lee was seen collapsing.
He was bleeding but still conscious as he was transported to the hospital.
Police officials quickly rounded up the assailant, who was wearing a hat with Lee’s name on it, and wrestled him to the ground.
A witness reportedly said that Lee was walking to his car when the attacker asked for his autograph and struck him with something that ‘looked like knife’.
Kwon Chil-seung,an MP from Lee's Democratic Party, told reporters that it was an act of terror against Lee.
The MP termed the attack a serious threat to democracy which should ‘never occur under any circumstances’.
Reports citing police said that Lee suffered a ‘one-centimetre laceration on his neck’, adding that ‘bleeding is minor’.
South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol expressed concern over Lee’s safety, adding that ‘society should never tolerate this kind of act of violence’.
Lee lost to Yoon Suk Yeol in the 2022 presidential poll; however, Lee’s ratings still remains strong, giving hope to his followers that he will run for president again in 2027.
Lee, a child factory worker and school drop-out who suffered an industrial accident, emerged on South Korean political scene narrating his life story.
Alongside his popularity, Lee still faces trial over bribery charges linked to a firm which allegedly transferred $8 million to North Korea.