The attack on Mark Lippert, the American ambassador to South Korea, made headlines worldwide on Thursday. Since his arrival in Seoul last October, Lippert received high marks from the Korean people and the media for his accessibility to the public there. Lippert, a Stanford graduate, is a very close friend of President Obama, who has called him “brother,” and attended his ambassadorial swearing-in ceremony.

The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center asked David Straub to discuss the incident and its significance. The associate director of the Korea Program at Stanford, Straub served as a career diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Seoul from 1999 to 2002 and is the author of the forthcoming book about that period called Anti-Americanism in Democratizating South Korea.

What actually happened?

A South Korean extreme left-wing activist, Kim Ki-jong, slashed Ambassador Lippert with a kitchen knife Thursday morning at a public event in Seoul. Koreans at the event immediately wrestled the assailant to the floor, but not before he had inflicted several wounds on the ambassador: a long, deep gash on his cheek and cuts to his wrist and fingers. The ambassador was taken straightway to hospital, where surgeons repaired the damage in a three-hour operation. The prognosis is that he will regain the full use of his fingers in about six months, and that the scar on his face will be barely noticeable in one or two years. His doctors plan to remove the eighty stitches on his cheek on Monday, and, if all is well, release him from the hospital then. But it was a close call. Had the face wound extended only one inch farther down, it would have severed his carotid artery.

How is Ambassador Lippert doing?

He told his doctors on Friday that the facial wound was not bothering him particularly, but he did have some pain in his wrist and fingers. Doctors say he has some nerve damage there but the pain should ease soon. Ambassador Lippert’s response has been laudable. Consistent with the outstanding way he has comported himself in Korea since his arrival, he promptly tweeted on Thursday that he was “Doing well & in great spirits!” I am also aware that he was even responding to email wishes from some Stanford friends on Thursday.

Was Kim acting alone? How was it possible for him to perpetrate this attack?

Kim was the only person who attacked Ambassador Lippert, and he has stated that he acted alone.  Kim was a member of the organization that hosted Ambassador Lippert, but had not been invited to the function. The incident is still being investigated but Korean press reports say that the U.S. embassy declined South Korean police protection some time ago. Korea is considered a relatively safe country for American diplomats. This will all be sorted out in coming days and weeks, and U.S. and South Korean authorities will determine if other security arrangements are needed for Ambassador Lippert. In any event, it does not appear that this was an egregious security or intelligence failure on anyone’s part. Ambassadors are public figures and it’s not possible to provide them with perfect protection.

What was the assailant’s motivation?

Kim said that he wanted to emphasize that the United States is responsible for preventing improved inter-Korean relations because it does such things as participate in the ongoing combined military exercises with South Korean forces. North Korea cites the annual exercises as a pretext for not talking with the South, claiming each year that they are a prelude to an invasion. But Kim is a sad sack figure even within South Korea’s anti-American far left, which is a very small but vocal minority. Kim has been arrested many times in the past for outrageous and violent behavior, such as throwing pieces of concrete at the Japanese ambassador in 2010. He heads his own little NGO, but the Korean left has mostly avoided him because of his bizarre behavior. He even set himself on fire in 2007 near the Blue House to protest an alleged attack on an associate. Although I have never met him, it is my impression that Kim is clearly mentally and emotionally unstable.

How have the Korean government and people responded?

From the people who wrestled the assailant to the ground, to the surgeons and the thousands of people who are wishing Ambassador Lippert well, South Koreans have responded with an outpouring of support. Ambassador Lippert has already conveyed his deep gratitude for that on Twitter. President Park, who is currently on an official visit to the Middle East, telephoned Ambassador Lippert on Thursday; so did Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. President Obama also called the ambassador to wish him a speedy recovery. Unfortunately, North Korea’s reaction has been very different: its official media applauded the attack as “deserved punishment” for “a warmongering United States.”

There are press reports that South Koreans are worried that this attack could hurt U.S.-Korean relations.

There is indeed considerable concern being expressed in South Korea at the moment that the incident could hurt bilateral relations, but there is no reason at all to believe that will be the case. Top U.S. officials have already stated that the incident will only strengthen U.S.-Korean relations. I recall the reaction in Seoul to the mass shooting by Seung-hui Cho at Virginia Tech in 2007. Cho had grown up in the United States but remained a Korean citizen. Many South Koreans were very fearful that the U.S. government would punish South Koreans, such as by not issuing visas, and that Americans would attack South Koreans on the streets in the United States. Of course, nothing like that happened. Americans understood the tragedy for what it was: not a “Korean” but a fellow human being with severe mental illness and access to guns.

You say that Kim appears to have a mental disability. But there are press reports that he lectured for the South Korean unification ministry’s education institute as well as at a major university in Seoul. How could such a person get those positions?

I am curious and concerned about those reports. For me, the bigger question about that is not Kim’s particular policy views but how someone with such obvious behavioral and apparently mental issues could receive such positions. But he held those jobs several years ago, so perhaps his behavior has become worse in the meantime.

I understand that Kim has already been charged with attempted murder and that Korean authorities are considering whether to charge him under the National Security Law owing to frequent travel to North Korea and possible other links with the North Korean government.

Unless Korean authorities find evidence that Kim was working for North Korea, which I doubt was the case (but which should of course be investigated due to his numerous trips to the country), it would be unfortunate for U.S.-South Korean relations to charge him under the controversial National Security Law. The U.S. government has criticized that law for decades for the McCarthyite way South Korean governments have sometimes implemented it to suppress alleged “pro-North Korean” thinking. Some South Korean leaders are calling the incident “pro-North Korean terrorism” and the work of “pro-North Korean forces.” That seems to me to be unwisely elevating the violent behavior of one deranged person and ascribing to it a significance it does not deserve.

Ambassador Lippert’s Twitter handle is @mwlippert.

The human rights situation in North Korea has gained considerable attention lately, due in part to an official report released by the United Nations last year. The landmark report condemned North Korea for systematic and widespread human rights violations.

Now for three weeks in March, the UN human rights council meets in Geneva for its regular session. North Korea’s human rights situation is a top agenda item, marked by a rare appearance by North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Young. In Dec. 2014, the UN General Assembly urged the Security Council to take up the situation of North Korea, including a possible referral of those responsible for prosecution in the International Criminal Court.

Looking beyond UN – U.S. – North Korea engagement, the European Union and its members have long-raised similar concerns. In a new policy brief “North Korean Human Rights: A Long Journey with Little Progress,” Mike Cowin details the human rights situation and institutions involved from a British perspective.

“The DPRK will need to make considerable efforts if it is to undermine more than a handful of the hundreds of testimonies of abuse that have been collected and brought to the world’s attention,” writes Cowin, a former deputy chief of mission at the British Embassy in Pyongyang.

Cowin is the Pantech Fellow in the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Before coming to Stanford, he also served in the embassies in Seoul from 2003 to 2007, and in Tokyo from 1992 to 1997.

The EU and North Korea have held seemingly incompatible positions for the past 11 years, and the March council meetings are unlikely to change that impasse. However, Cowin suggests that the EU should seek ways to have more impact.

“Perhaps the EU, which has often led the world on human rights, could find some way to talk with the DPRK, establishing a mutually acceptable way to restart engagement,” he writes.

Cowin says restarting engagement may take the form of quiet, long-term confidence building.

The Korea Program has published additional works focused on human rights in North Korea, including a paper that looks at living with disabilities in North Korea by Katharina Zellweger and an op-ed by Gi-Wook Shin calling for international consensus on the North Korea problem. Engaging North Korea is also a research focus of the Korea Program, which last year produced a policy paper on North-South Korean relations and the prospect for unification.

In a speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in May 2013, South Korean President Park Geun-hye contended, “Asia suffers from what I call ‘the Asian paradox,’ the disconnect between growing economic interdependence on the one hand, and backward political, security cooperation on the other.” This is, she noted, because “differences stemming from history are widening” and “how we manage this paradox” will determine the configuration of a new order in Asia.

Pessimists worry that colonial and wartime history problems will persist and that there is not much we can do about it. On the other hand, optimists believe that history issues will inevitably fade away over time as the wartime generation passes away and the countries of the region become increasingly integrated economically and culturally.

Only time can tell us which view is correct. But we cannot rely on time alone to heal these wounds and need to be cautious about unwarranted optimism regarding regional cooperation. We see the continuing power of “identity politics” in the nations of Northeast Asia, and recent transformations of historical memory show worrisome tendencies in South Korea, Japan and China. Certainly, Northeast Asian nations have been democratizing and/or promoting regionalism and globalization in recent decades, but none has uprooted or weakened the power of nationalism in the region. On the contrary, these changes may produce a crisis of national identity, strengthening nationalist sentiment in some quarters.

In Korea, nationalism has long guided the approach to the issue of historical injustice. Nationalism has produced master narratives of colonial history and offered a dominant framework for dealing with historical injustices such as comfort women and forced labor. It forces issues to be framed in a binary opposition—victims versus aggressors—and allows little room for gray areas, making it difficult to formulate a shared view of historical injustice. Ironically, the racism or nationalism that gave rise to historical injustice in the first place continues to inform victims’ approaches to reckoning with past wrongs. Disputes over the history of the ancient kingdom of Koguryŏ (Gaogouli in Chinese) reflect “irredentism” on the part of South Korea as well as China’s rising nationalism.

In Japan, uncertainties and anxieties created by the post-Cold War security environment and years of economic stagnation provided a fertile ground for easy and extreme answers in the form of nationalist politics. Nationalist scholars are making headway in producing textbooks to “make Japanese proud of themselves,” and nationalism is a prevailing theme in the military history museum attached to the Yasukuni Shrine, which Prime Ministers Koizumi and Abe visited during their tenure despite outcries from neighbours and against the concerns of many Japanese. The restoration of symbols such as the flag and national anthem are part of Japan’s quest to become a “normal nation.” If there is any difference between South Korea and Japan, it is that the left in South Korea—as opposed to the right in Japan—is at the forefront of nationalist politics of the history question.

In China, too, political leaders are promoting nationalism (or patriotism in their own words) to bolster social and political cohesion. Beijing needs a new unifying force to mobilize the nation in the face of the rapid (and disruptive) processes of socioeconomic modernization. In particular, in the post-Tiananmen era, the Chinese leadership appealed to nationalism to shore up its tainted legitimacy. China’s policy toward its minorities is based on the notion of a grand multi-ethnically unified China. History activists appeal to nationalist sentiments by commemorating Chinese suffering during the Japanese occupation, and nationalism is the force behind China’s territorial disputes with Japan and Southeast Asian neighbors as well as the straits relations.

Thus, despite increased intra-Asian trade, cultural exchange, and talks about an East Asian community, Korea, Japan, and China all still find politics of national identity appealing. After all, nationalism not only is about ideology but also thrives on narrowly defined “national interests.” Disputed territories always serve as symbols of national sovereignty that cannot be compromised. The mutual suspicion of Japan and China over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands and other territorial waters, and the Korean-Japanese tensions over Dokdo/Takeshima, are but two potent reminders.

History education reinforces nationalist sentiments in Northeast Asia. In both Japan and South Korea, the Ministry of Education requires that all textbooks undergo a strict screening process, and in China, the government plays an even stronger role in history textbook writings. In all three, nationalism is the guiding principle of official historical narratives, as they are obsessed with writing national history based on a single historical memory that stresses their struggles with outside aggression. In China, for instance, a new history textbook offers a significantly altered view of the wartime period in line with the Patriotic Education Campaign that began in the 1990s. Because history textbooks affect national identity, the politics of nationalism invariably influence their writing, which in turn promotes nationalist sentiments in the new generation.

Thus, the key challenge facing Northeast Asia is how to tame the power of nationalism while promoting vibrant civil society with global thinking as well as regional cooperation. Also, while some expect generational change and increasing people-to-people exchanges to heal wounds from the past, the picture seems mixed. In China and South Korea, surveys among the countries’ youth regularly register a highly negative view of Japan over history issues. It may be true that the passing of the war generations will end some of the vivid, bitter animosities. On the other hand, the importance that second and third generations attach to past issues and how they perceive them are not only a result of time, but also a reflection of the historical knowledge they acquire through education, museums, films and other media.

When issues of the past posed a stumbling block in ameliorating relations between China and Japan in the 1970s, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said, “Because our generation is not wise enough to resolve all of the pending questions, let’s leave the unsettled ones to next generation.” Contrary to his expectations, however, the two countries are stricken today with a worse situation involving history and territorial disputes, and the younger generation tends to be even more swayed by the fever of nationalism.

Now is a moment of danger and opportunity for Northeast Asia. The current impasse in regional relations demands a commitment to confront the corrosive nationalism fed by the unresolved issues of history. Disregarding or ignoring an unfortunate past means not only evasion of historical accountability but also a missed opportunity to learn from history. Germany’s failure to learn from its defeat in the First World War led to the rise of Nazism and another world war. The German experience should provide a valuable lesson for all, especially Japan, as they struggle to deal with the growing power of nationalism and identity politics.

This article was originally carried by the University of Nottingham's China Policy Institute Blog on 10 February and reposted with permission.