According to Chang, Kim had been sitting a few feet away from the head table, where he was seated with Lippert.

“It happened in a mere few seconds,” he said.

Chang and a few others at the scene wrestled Kim down. Police arrived a few minutes later and carried him away.

Kim suffered a broken ankle during the tussle, police said.

He later confessed he had prepared his attack for 10 days, after finding out about the event.

In 2010, the activist was reportedly arrested on charges of throwing blocks of concrete toward then-Japanese Ambassador Toshinori Shigeie during his lecture in Seoul. He was given a two-year jail term suspended for three years.

Kim has been engaged in a series of campaigns, including one to safeguard Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo. In 2006 after Japan’s Shimane prefecture declared its Takeshima Day, after the Japanese name for Dokdo, Kim, along with other activists, changed their home addresses to one located on the islets.

In 2007, he set himself on fire during a one-man protest in front of Cheong Wa Dae, calling on the government to thoroughly probe a case in which a member of his civic group was attacked by unidentified men at the group’s office in Seoul.

By Song Sang-ho and Jeong Hunny
(sshluck@heraldcorp.com) (hj257@heraldcorp.com)