Political Economist

NYT January 22, 2006

In a Country That Craved Respect, Stem Cell Scientist Rode a Wave of Korean Pride

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 20 - After first gaining attention in South Korea for cloning a cow in 1999, Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, the fallen stem-cell scientist, promised to clone next an animal with deeper meaning to Koreans: a tiger.

A holy animal according to Korean lore, tigers once populated the peninsula but were hunted to virtual extinction during Japanese colonial rule. They are believed to exist today, if they exist at all, in North Korea's Mount Paektu, which Koreans consider their ancestral origin.

"I'll spread the Korean people's spirit by cloning the Mount Paektu tiger," Dr. Hwang said at the time.

From his promise to clone a tiger half a decade ago to his apology for disgracing his country last week, Dr. Hwang never shied away from the strong appeals to nationalism that helped turn him into a hero.

The scientist's spectacular rise and fall, as well as one of the biggest scientific frauds in recent history, took place in the crucible of a country whose deep-rooted insecurities had been tempered by a newfound confidence and yearning for international recognition.

"Dr. Hwang was going to give South Korea the momentum to leap ahead in its position in the world," said Won Suk Min, 26, an electrical engineering student at Korea University here. "A lot of people around me feel empty now. They feel that there is nothing to look forward to."

Last week, an investigative panel appointed by Seoul National University, where Dr. Hwang was a professor, concluded that he had faked the evidence for landmark papers on stem-cell and embryonic research in 2004 and 2005.

The conclusion was a psychological blow to South Koreans, for whom Dr. Hwang's success had appeared to confirm their country's new place in the world. In the past half decade, South Korea had surged forward on different levels, as companies like Samsung overtook Sony, the "Korean Wave" of pop culture spread throughout Asia and the country became the world's most wired nation.

By contrast, in 1999, recapturing South Korea's spirit resonated powerfully in a country that was still reeling from the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

"It was a beacon of light in the dark," said Kim Ki Jung, a political scientist at Yonsei University here.

"Hwang triggered Korean sentiments of nationalistic pride," Mr. Kim said, adding that the sentiments eventually led to a national mood of "blind patriotism" toward the scientist.

Dr. Hwang began drawing the country's adulation when, in February 2004, he became an international celebrity for writing in the leading scientific journal, Science, that he had cloned human embryos. In June 2005, he published a paper, again in Science, to the effect that he had developed a technique to extract embryonic stem cells from fewer human eggs than previous methods required. This further raised the hopes for therapeutic cloning and the possibility of converting a patient's own cells into new tissues to treat various diseases.

The papers transformed Dr. Hwang into a national hero: a handsome 53-year-old scientist who had risen from humble origins to lead South Korea to places it and the rest of the world had not seen. Web sites went up in his honor, women volunteered to donate eggs, Korean Air volunteered to fly him anywhere free.

The government of President Roh Moo Hyun, who had embraced and promoted him aggressively, gave him millions of dollars in research money, made him the country's top scientist and assigned him bodyguards. It issued a postage stamp that engraved Dr. Hwang's promise to make paralyzed people walk through images of a man in a wheelchair who stands up, dances and embraces a woman. The government also extolled his exploits in government school textbooks, describing him in a sixth-grade textbook as a challenger for the Nobel Prize.

"He was going to change our country's image and make South Korea No. 1 in the world in this sector," said Huh Hyun, 37, who was shopping on a recent day at the Carafe megastore with her husband. "We don't have someone to represent us to the world. South Africa, for example, has Mandela."

South Koreans also spoke of Dr. Hwang in terms of national interests.

"Because we are a homogenous people, we identified ourselves with this one individual and overlooked his faults," said Cheon Jeong Seok, 34, another shopper.

Mr. Cheon said the worship of Dr. Hwang was also rooted in the fierce nationalism fostered during the decades of military dictatorship, until the late 1980's. "We were taught constantly about national interests and that the ends justified the means," Mr. Cheon said.

In this atmosphere, Dr. Hwang became untouchable.

"Many of us didn't trust him," Kim Jae Sup, professor of developmental biology at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, said of Korean scientists. "But the pressure from the public and government to support him actually inhibited our criticism. We couldn't say anything. That's why scientists posted evidence against him on Web sites. It was anonymous."

A whistleblower scientist also contacted "PD Notebook," an investigative program at the television network MBC, which exposed Dr. Hwang. The producer of the program later said that, in response, " 'PD Notebook' was treated like a Judas who sold off Jesus Christ."

Huge protests and boycotts were aimed at the program.

After Japanese researchers published a paper on dog stem cells, The Chosun Ilbo, the largest South Korean daily newspaper, contended that Dr. Hwang had been preparing such a paper before he was "pestered by 'PD Notebook.' "

The newspaper touched upon one of the undercurrents in the wave supporting Dr. Hwang: South Korea's sense of rivalry with Japan, its former colonial power, and its fixation with elevating its position in the world.

That goal was manifested in what some call the country's "Nobel Prize disease" or its obsession with winning its first Nobel Prize in the sciences. (South Korea's only Nobel laureate, Kim Dae Jung, the former president, won a Nobel Peace Prize.) With Dr. Hwang, the prize had seemed within easy grasp; now there were other worries.

"I hear that this is being reported around the world, in the United States and in Japan," said Park Soon Yeh, a woman in her 60's who sells handbags and suitcases at the Namdaemun Market here. "I'm worried that when young Korean scientists go abroad now, foreigners will not have confidence in them."

As his research imploded in recent weeks, Dr. Hwang grasped at the same kind of nationalistic sentiments that had propelled him to stardom. He said he would keep "fighting in a white robe," a reference to Yi Sun Shin, the naval commander who repelled a Japanese invasion in the 16th century and saved Korea.

Last Thursday, after the government announced that it would discontinue the stamps in his honor and edit out references to him in textbooks, Dr. Hwang insisted that he still had the technology to extract stem cells from human embryos, saying, "This is the Republic of Korea's technology."

He apologized for the fraudulent data in his work, blaming a research partner.

"I was crazy with work," Dr. Hwang said. "I could see nothing in front of me. I only saw one thing and that is how this country called the Republic of Korea could stand straight in the center of the world."

Like many other South Koreans interviewed, Lee Yong Koo, 50, who also sells clothes at the market, said that even if he no longer trusted Dr. Hwang, he was willing to give him another chance. He was not pegging the country's future on him anymore, though.

"I don't expect him to bring foreign money into South Korea or make this country rich," Mr. Lee said. "We have Samsung and other companies to do that."