Following the establishment of a working group between South Korea and the U.S.to investigate, Seoul is now placing a sharper focus on the incident.
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United States Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert faced a second scare of his relatively short spell in Seoul, it emerged Friday, as police announced the arrest of a local man for threatening to kill the envoy.
A senior official at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said the man, identified by his surname Lee, had included the threat in a post written on the White House website.
The man allegedly left an English-language message vowing to kill Mark Lippert with “nuclear poisoning” on the White House website on July 8, police said in a statement.
The allegations come four months after Lippert was attacked with a knife in Seoul.
Police say the message didn’t clearly explain why he wants to kill Lippert.
He suffered deep gashes to his face and hand when Korean nationalist Kim Ki-jong lunged at him with a knife at a breakfast meeting in a hotel.
According to the police, Lee is reportedly unemployed and lived in seclusion spending most of his time surfing the Internet. The investigation began at the request of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, according to the police statement. Lee could be jailed for five years if found guilty.
The man who attacked Mr. Lippert in March was charged with attempted murder.
Kim is said to have opposed military drills involving the U.S. and South Korea – such exercises are also regularly denounced by North Korea’s authoritarian leadership as preparations for war.
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But recent opposition to deploying a U.S. missile defense system on the peninsula has exposed a long-held desire by some South Korean lawmakers to work toward greater autonomy.
