Bulletproof Vests and Glass: South Korean Candidate Tightens Security

In a country that mostly outlaws guns, the front-runner for president has been campaigning for Tuesday’s vote clad in a bulletproof vest and giving speeches behind bulletproof glass.

Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the South Korean Democratic Party, has openly stepped up security to levels rarely seen in a South Korean election.

Early in the campaign season last month, Mr. Lee took off his suit to unveil a white bulletproof vest before slipping on his party’s blue jacket in front of his supporters. During one speech, he was yelled at by supporters imploring him to stay behind protective glass after he briefly stepped outside of its cover. His team has restricted access for journalists and has only allowed a select few to tag along as he toured the nation.

Mr. Lee has reason to be concerned: He survived an attempted assassination last January when a man stabbed him in the neck after approaching him to ask for his autograph, in a worrying sign of how politically polarized the country had become. Last week, the National Police Agency said it had received nearly a dozen reports of online threats to kill Mr. Lee. One has been forwarded to prosecutors, an agency spokesman said.

“Threat levels for this election have been higher than those in the past,” said Professor Yoon Taeyoung, who specializes in terrorism, crisis management and national intelligence at Kyungnam University.

Political violence is rare in South Korea, but there have been high-profile episodes of it. In 2006, former president Park Geun-hye —- who was then a lawmaker — suffered a four-inch cut to her face after a man attacked her with a knife. Her father, the strongman Park Chung-hee, was fatally shot by the chief of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency at a dinner in 1979. More recently, Song Young-gil, the chief of the Democratic Party at the time, survived an attack to the head with a hammer in 2022.