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Mark Lippert was at a breakfast meeting when the attack happened, Stephen Evans reports from Seoul
A militant Korean nationalist has slashed the face of the US ambassador to South Korea at a breakfast meeting in Seoul, but the envoy was not seriously hurt.
Mark Lippert, 42, was also cut on his left hand, with blood spattered over the breakfast table.
Security officers subdued the attacker, one pinning him down with a shoe on his neck, until he was arrested.
North Korea has described the attack as "just punishment for US warmongers".
South Korean police, who are in the process of obtaining warrants to search the attacker's home, are seeking to establish whether he has close ties with the North, the BBC's Stephen Evans reports from Seoul.
Mr Lippert had hospital treatment but later wrote in a tweet: "Doing well and in great spirits... Will be back ASAP to advance US-ROK [Republic of Korea] alliance!"
US President Barack Obama called his ambassador to wish him "the very best for a speedy recovery", a US official said.
Analysis: Stephen Evans, BBC News, Seoul
Nobody believes that pro-North Korean groups represent a majority of South Koreans but they are still a significant minority and part of the political landscape.
In November, South Korea's constitutional court ordered that the Unified Progressive Party be dissolved even though it had five members elected to parliament. The authorities said the UPP posed a threat to South Korean democracy. One of its leaders was jailed.
The counter-argument of the leftist nationalists is not so much that they want to be ruled by Pyongyang or fall under a North Korean system but that the American military presence in South Korea perpetuates a division within one people - the Korean people.
The strong feelings of pro-Pyongyang activists become most obvious when anti-Pyongyang activists launch balloons into the North loaded with propaganda messages. The two sides confront each other, with much jostling and shouting. There was a small pro-US demonstration after the attack on the ambassador but some on the streets of the capital said they applauded it.
The US state department said it strongly condemned the incident which South Korean President Park Guen-hye described as an "attack on the South Korea-US alliance".
Witnesses say the attacker, a 55-year-old man with a history of militant Korean nationalistic activism, shouted demands for North and South Korea to be reunified.
A small group of South Koreans held a protest against the attack outside the hospital where Mr Lippert was treated, waving placards which read "Mark Lippert, Cheer up!" and "Korea-US relationship is solid".
Eighty stitchesIt took 80 stitches to close the ambassador's facial wound, which was 11 cm (just more than 4 in) long and 3 cm deep, doctors said.
The cut did not affect his nerves or salivary gland, hospital spokesman Chung Nam-sik said.
The attack happened at about 07:40 (22:40 GMT Wednesday), as the ambassador was at a performing arts centre in central Seoul, South Korean police say.
The assailant, named as Kim Ki-jong, reportedly shouted "South and North Korea should be reunified!" before lashing out at the envoy.
He also reportedly condemned annual military exercises held jointly by South Korea and the US, which are currently under way.
North Korea has described the exercises - which involve more than 200,000 troops - as a rehearsal for an invasion and has vowed retaliation.
A small group of South Koreans believe that the American military presence prevents unification of the two Koreas.
The assailant previously threw concrete at the Japanese ambassador to South Korea.
The 1950-53 war which split the Korean peninsula ended in an armistice, with neither side able to claim outright victory.
No peace treaty has ever been signed and the sides regularly accuse each other of violating the agreement.
Mr Lippert - a former US assistant secretary of defence - was appointed ambassador to South Korea in 2014.
His wife gave birth in the country, and the couple gave their son a Korean middle name, according to the Associated Press news agency.
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