Explaining the Hwang Scandal: National Scientific Culture and its Global Relevance

Abstract

The cloning scandal around South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk—who had forged scientific data and taken donor eggs from his PhD student—has often been explained by stereotyped models of cultural difference. As two national features which partly account for the scandal, knowledge acquisition in South Korea has close connections to hierarchies of status and prestige; and the life sciences there have a technological approach focused on applications. Similarly, the South Korean work ethos imposes a severe workload on junior researchers. Combined with expectations of self-sacrifice, this scientific culture mobilizes people as resources for scientific experiments and deters any criticism.

Although such national features influence research practices in South Korea, they have global relevance. Actors do not merely conform to hegemonic authority structures; rather, they use various tactics to incorporate, appropriate, and twist the cultural ‘rules of the game’. The Hwang scandal resulted from such interactions between actors, strategies, knowledges and narratives. Thus the scandal has general features that increasingly arise beyond South Korea, especially as science worldwide faces greater competitive pressures. National cultural differences should be seen as a resource for understanding how similar problems arise, albeit in apparently different ways.

Keywords:

• Hwang Woo Suk
• human embryonic stem cell research
• scientific misconduct
• discourse
• national scientific culture

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express gratitude to the guest editors, Sarah Franklin, Barbara Prainsack and Ingrid Geesink, all of whom provided extensive help to improve this work. He would also like to express gratitude to Les Levidow for his exquisite editing and patience. The author is thankful to his colleague in LSE, Shahanah Schmid, who initially corrected the rough-draft English. Finally, he is grateful to anonymous referees who gave invaluable comments.

Notes

According to the polling broadcast by the South Korean SBS 8 o'clock news in July 2008, 88.4% of respondents in South Korea agreed that Hwang should be given the chance to resume his stem cell research. The main reasons were either that Hwang could produce a stem cell (24.1%) or that he was a vital scientist in stem cell research (57.7.%).

The interviews were initially conducted to study general social backgrounds of life science in South Korea when the success stories of Hwang were creating enormous hype in society. But the initial objective was slightly switched to analyse the social factors that might have influenced scientific practices when the scandal broke out shortly after.

Rigidly stratified preference of study subjects in university as well as the university ranks signifies this attitude. Especially undergraduate students' majors are strictly chosen according to the examinees' SAT grades, and more often than not the majors themselves become stigmas representing their potential social position in South Korea.

For example, the number of published SCI papers in South Korea on the stem cell topic is much smaller than the British counterpart, and its impact factor (1.01) is far below the world average (3.55) in the year 2004. As the non-patent reference (NPR) index in the same year clearly indicates, the US (25.8) and the UK (15.1) are relatively more basic science oriented while Japan (7.5) and South Korea (5.7) are mainly focusing on the production of applicative knowledge. While the number of articles published in SCI journals is on the rise, the overall citation index in basic science remains low (cited in Ministry of Science & Technology, 2006).

An additional clause was appended in the Act, which declared: ‘Those who have undergone the research on embryos created by SCNT can continue the same research under the approval of the Minister of Health if they meet the specific conditions stated: (1) to have been working on the research for more than three years; and (2) to have published relevant research papers more than once in the relevant journals’. At the time of the endorsement, there was only one research team in South Korea that could meet the stipulated criteria: Professor Hwang's Seoul National University Team.

Still, Choon Key Chekar and Jenny Kitzinger's article (2008) can be a good reference for the general aspects.

According to the market research and branding consultancy Orient Pacific Century Advantage, ‘South Korea is one of the most profitable markets for local and foreign companies, with consumer affordability levels at the highest worldwide. A population fast approaching 100 million attests to South Korea's feasibility as a targeted geographic market. South Koreans are among the top five Internet user countries in the world, with high penetration levels and broad-band high speed connections the norm. Seoul is one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world … However, South Koreans are a very proud people. There is an often complex love–hate relationship with foreign brands, and very few understand or speak English, or even languages of their geographically closest trading partners—Japan, Taiwan and China’ (available at: http://www.orientpacific.com/dc/korea.htm, accessed 16 June 2008).

Hwang's declaration at the press conference on his way back to South Korea, after attending a scientific conference held in the US, was that he had hoisted the South Korean flag in the ‘heart of biotechnology’ of the US. He also took credit for the start of the ‘Biotechnological Revolution in the twenty-first century’ in South Korea (Seoul Economy, 19 February 2004).

As Tae-Ho Kim (2008) points out, the experience of sudden economic ‘collapse’ (financial crisis in 1997) in South Korea, after unprecedented growth during the previous half century, could be an additional factor explaining the collective psychology of desperateness.

Quoted from ‘The Seoul of clones: solving a biotech mystery: why South Korea leads the world in stem-cell research’ by David Plotz (2005).

For the latter case, it might look bizarre from the Western point of view and some may want to know what would be the official reason for the admonishment. Hwang does not explicate the reason in his biography, because the implicit context is common in South Korean society. Since the price of the imported car is far more expensive than in the US, a young junior student purchasing one could be something to raise eyebrows. ‘Don't stand out yourself, don't exhibit your wealth, and just concentrate on the work as others do’ could be a ‘moral’ message the patriarch might want to convey. On the other hand, this kind of widespread ‘ethical intrusion’ into private life in South Korean society functions to homogenize the subjects under the status quo.

Kim testified that he was sceptical of the feasibility that the seeded blastocyst would grow to form a colony, so he mixed the inner cell mass with the embryonic stem cell clump brought from the MizMedi hospital. He said his reason for this was that he was under strong pressure from Hwang who always pushed him for successful results. He was particularly averse to being compared with the former researcher Park Jong Hyuk who was able to go to Pittsburgh University after he succeeded in establishing the first stem cell (NT-1) for Hwang in 2004, which now has turned out to be another fabrication. It should be noted, on the other hand, that both Kim and Park could be considered as ‘weak links’ among Hwang's people. They were originally dispatched from MizMedi hospital to help derive stem cell lines, whose practice Hwang's veterinarian team was not familiar with. Therefore, the degree of control Hwang could play on them was comparatively limited from the beginning.

100 Minutes' Discussion is a weekly discussion programme in South Korea, with open-ended conclusions, conducted by inviting experts with contrasting opinions as panellists.

Regarding the symbol of the flower, Sun-Hye Kim claims that it was also the allegory of ova that the women pledged to ‘give’ to the beloved male scientist, Hwang.

See the presentations at the International Forum on the Human Rights of Women and Biotechnology, 21 September 2006 (Seoul Women's Plaza, Seoul, South Korea). It should be noted, on the other hand, that their works gained a certain degree of public support only after the disclosure of the ‘fabrication’ issue, not the problem of unethical collection of human eggs which was previously revealed.

I analysed people's written discussions on the board of Agora at the Daum website (www.daum.net) from 25 November 2005 to 9 January 2006. The date 25 November 2005 was one day after Hwang held the press conference confessing his misconducts on the human eggs issue; 9 January 2006 was a day before the final decision was made by the expert committee of Seoul National University on the fabrication issue.

Many people during the scandal identified the situation of Hwang with Lee Soon Shin, who was a heroic naval general in the sixteenth century but is suspected to have committed suicide because of being blackmailed by other jealous generals and the king's willingness to eliminate the person who might be a threat to him. The ‘agony’ of Lee Soon Shin typically delivered to the public was the hardship that an individual experiences because he cannot guarantee his survival in society where pure capacity doesn't count for much; but more often than not the pure capacity and effort themselves only provoke jealousy of the central power as well as his peers.

The South Korean government refused to award the news producer based on two officially declared reasons: (1) the disclosure of Hwang's misconduct was partly carried out by a coercive method against interviewee, Kim Sun Jong; and (2) there was strong public sentiment opposed to PD Notebook's conduct. But the ‘coercive method’ was malignantly exaggerated, distorted, by some rival media, while the interviewers had implied that the interviewee might be involved in Hwang's fabrication charge unless he explicates what had actually happened. Were South Korean people in general indignant about MBC's disclosure based on their moral principle, or was it just a good excuse to accuse the disclosure?