Bae Hyun-jin, a lawmaker from South Korea's conservative ruling People's Party, was hospitalized on Thursday after she was hit in the head with a rock by a teenager as she stood outside a building in a central district of Seoul. The boy was stopped immediately afterwards; the reasons for the attack are currently unknown. The hospital said Bae Hyun-jin suffered a head injury but was in stable condition. Bae Hyun-jin is 40 years old, a former television journalist and in her first term as a parliamentarian.
It is the second attack against a politician in a month: opposition leader Lee Jae-myung was stabbed to death at the beginning of January. Although South Korea is a fundamentally safe country, there have been high political tensions in the run-up to the parliamentary elections in April.