President Park Geun-hye called Thursday for efforts to build social confidence following the bloody attack against the top U.S. envoy by an anti-U.S. activist one week ago.
Park repeated at a national prayer breakfast meeting in southern Seoul that acts of terrorism should never be tolerated under any circumstances.
Park’s latest comments came a week after the anti-U.S. activist Kim Ki-jong attacked U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert with a 25-centimeter knife at a breakfast function in downtown Seoul, leaving him with deep gashes on his face and wrist that needed 80 stitches.
Park made a surprise visit Monday to Lippert, who was recovering in a Seoul hospital before being released the following day, upon returning from an official four-nation tour of the Middle East.
“I think it’s urgent to build social confidence and integration to end the vicious cycle of friction and division,” Park said at the breakfast meeting.
She also called for efforts to end a seven decades-old division and open the door to unification with North Korea, noting 70 has a significant meaning in the Bible.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule.
Upon liberation, the Korean Peninsula was divided into the capitalist South and communist North. The peninsula is still at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap)
