Bionationalism, stem cells, BSE, and Web 2.0 in South Korea: toward the reconfiguration of biopolitics

Abstract

We argue that at the core of contemporary biopolitics in South Korea there is a politics of identity built around the gradual transformation of ethnic nationalism based primarily on ethnicity, blood, and membership to a new kind of nationalism in which ethnicity is biologically and scientifically reconfigured. The emerging Korean bionationalism goes beyond traditional ethnic nationalism by combining a focus on ethnicity and race with a belief in the deeply transformative potentials of modern science, and in particular medical and life sciences for Korean bodies and the economic future of the nation. At the same time, there also seems to be a tendency in Korean bionationalism not only to optimize the population through novel, technoscientific strategies, but also to “defend” the nation against biological menace from the outside, such as bioterrorism, and epidemics such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This bionationalism with its focus on the South Korean population combines a strong belief in using biomedical technoscience in the optimization of the population with a politically aggressive gesture of defending the Korean nation against “attack” from the outside. We argue that this constellation indicates the emergence of a new biopolitical constellation, which is also characterized by the broad utilization of Web 2.0 tools for the purpose of political mobilization.

Keywords:

• bionationalism
• biopolitics
• Hwang Woo-Suk
• South Korea
• stem cell science

Introduction

“Go away, mad cow!” shouted a protest leader from a podium in front of Seoul City Hall in early June 2008. The crowd of 30,000 people took up the chant, pumping their fists in the air. In Seoul and indeed all over South Korea, people took to the streets and, holding lighted candles, protested against the import of US beef, driven by their concern that the imported meat could transmit to the Korean people the deadly Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a human variant of bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE) (Korean Times, 1 June 2008). This worry was based on the fact that the Korean government just recently had signed a trade treaty with the United States that lifted a five-year ban on US beef imports to Korea. The resulting grassroots protests not only reflected the public's lack of trust in the South Korean government's public health strategies, and a crisis in democracy. They also pointed to the phenomenon of a strong tendency in the South Korea polity toward biopolitical mobilizations and countermobilizations around the image of the nation defined through race and ethnicity, and under pressure to be healed, protected, or advanced through political intervention.

The term biopolitics is closely related to the seminal work of Michel Foucault, but its meaning is subject to continuous renegotiation in the social sciences and humanities. Foucault has pointed to the significant historical transition contemporaneous with the shaping of industrial capitalism, in which emphasis shifted from the primacy of sovereignty, law, and coercion or force “to take life” to the development of new forms of power constitutive of life. Such processes of subjectification can occur in the form of the subjection of individuals to techniques of domination or through subtler techniques of the self. This power of life co-evolved in two forms: disciplining the body and regulating populations. Whereas the former had as its object the individual, the latter addressed itself explicitly to the “ensemble of the population” as a field of shaping and forging. These two strategies constituted the two poles around which the power over life was organized. The then-emerging biopolitics focused on the administration of life, in particular on the level of populations, and was concerned with matters of life and death – with birth, health, illness, and other processes that optimized the life of a population (Foucault 1979, Dean 1999, p. 99). In this model, the government and the state collected, collated, and calculated data on the characteristics of the population (births, deaths, rates of disease, etc.), to be complemented by those on individuals who engage in practices of “self-government” (Rose 2001). Despite the fact that biopower was not an exclusive project of the state but was effected through institutions such as family, health care, and the human sciences, Foucault argued, the state nevertheless played a central role in coordinating and steering biopolitics. At the same time, Foucault interpreted the locus of intervention of biopolitics to be the human body. Related to the idea of disciplining and steering human bodies was the idea of panopticism as the essence of social control (Foucault 1977), that is, the desire to direct behavior through the imposition of a totalizing and instrumental rationalism (Sewell 1998). This desire incorporated a need to know as much about individuals as possible, a need pursued through the deployment of instruments of measurement, enumeration, and rationalization. Such intense scrutiny not only extracted information about the activities of individuals, but it also went a long way toward shaping their subjectivity as individuals who saw themselves as they are defined through surveillance (Sewell 1998). Not only were the bodies of modern biopolitics constituted and controlled through methods of disciplining and surveillance, or guided through care of the self, these bodies were also territorialized in the context of the modern nation-state. This government of life operated within the space constituted by the state and was defined through the idea of the nation, in whose name and in defense of its population modern wars were waged.

But, as has been argued by Nikolas Rose, the ideal of the omnipresent state that would shape, coordinate, and direct the affairs in all sectors of society today has lost its grip on the public imagination. Accordingly, Rose, argues, in the health field the focus has moved from “society as a whole” to “risky individuals”, individual susceptibility (to genetic disease, for example), and, accordingly, to “risk groups” (Rose 2001). The proactive, individualized management of the human body has become a core element of collective and individual strategies of health maintenance and thus of contemporary biopolitics (Rose 2007).

The idea that biopolitics no longer operates in a space defined by a territory, a nation, or populations (Rose 2007) certainly describes crucial shifts in the unfolding of contemporary biopolitics. However, it needs to be questioned to what extent this notion of biopolitics does not conflict with the some developments that can be observed at least in non-Western constellations (Glasner and Bharadwaj 2009, Sleeboom-Faulkner 2009). As Susan Greenhalgh puts it:

Rose's sweeping generalizations about “the vital politics of our century” … might be appropriate for the advanced liberal societies of “the West” (though even there we should exercise caution), but the world of the twenty-first century may no longer find its center in the West. When we consider the rest of the world – which includes four-fifths of the global population, the rising global powers of China and India, with their very different histories and political rationalities and their more collectivist mentalities, and the ongoing reorganization of power at transnational and global levels – a different conclusion seems warranted. (Greenhalgh 2009, p. 206)

Although China offers interesting insights into a reality of biopolitics that is still strongly determined by the overarching power of the state and its iron-handed approach toward population politics, the picture is more ambiguous in South Korea. Many elements of biopolitics that can be seen in China are also present in South Korea, but the much more open character of the South Korean polity seems to have given rise to a strongly nationalistic version of biopolitics in which the imagining and reimagining of the nation has become a central but also highly contested terrain. Web 2.0 tools have played a key role in this context. We will further develop this argument first by theoretically detailing the concept of bionationalism. We will then discuss three recent instances of bionationalist mobilization in Korea: the case of the stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-Suk, the political conceptualization of women in South Korea as oocyte donors, and the 2008 mass demonstrations against lifting the ban on US beef in South Korea. These moments in current South Korean bionationalism seem to point toward the emergence of a novel configuration of biopolitics in that country.

Bionationalism as a concept

Contemporary social studies study nationalism closely (Day and Thompson 2004).1 Claims about its demise in the age of globalization contrast with counterclaims pointing at the rise of various forms of ethnic nationalism, or the prediction of a revival of nationalism in the wake of the collapse of the international financial system in 2008. Historically there have been two camps of thought on nationalism: one side sees militarism, war, irrationalism, and ethnocentrism as resulting from nationalism, whereas the other side sees nationalism as forwarding the positive values of democracy, social integration, and citizenship. Brubaker characterizes the debate as being between a civic understanding of nationalism that is seen by opponents as liberal, universalistic, and inclusive, and an ethnic understanding that is seen as conservative, particularistic, and exclusive (Brubaker 1999, pp. 55–56). Although analytical value can be found in such distinctions, it is constructivist approaches that provide the key to understanding nationalism: that the nation is a social, contested product reflecting shared experiences, historical events and defeats, and with it group struggles and power relationships (Day and Thompson 2004, Winter 2007, p. 495).

The historical context for nationalism in Korea differs from that in the West. In Europe, nationalism developed as an ideology to integrate various ethnic groups into one political community and to justify imperial expansion. In Korea, however, nationalism emerged as an ideology to counter colonialism and imperialism (Shin 2006, p. 229). In Korea's transition to modernity, nationalism has been an engine for anticolonialism and modernization, providing the ideological basis for unification and is a source of pride in a nation that has maintained a coherent political community within its territorial boundaries. At the same time, ethnic nationalism has marginalized alternatives that have competed in the modernization of Korea and has suppressed civil rights and individual freedom under the abstract but immutable name of “nation” (Shin 2006, p. 17).

The modernization process that had begun in the nineteenth century and the realization of Korea as a nation resulted in national identity becoming tied to ethnicity (Shin 2006, pp. 18–19). Identity politics in nation-states such as England and France operated within legal, institutional frameworks, with people becoming members of the nation when they became citizens; in Korea and Japan, however, people became members of the nation because of shared blood and race (Shin 2006, p. 234). In Japan, nationalism was connected with imperialism and militarism, but across the Korean society, nationalism expressed the country's anticolonialism, thereby giving it positive associations that could be mobilized by different political groups (Winter 2007, p. 495).

South Korea biopolitics after World War II offers a specific example of the gradual transformation of ethnic nationalism from a primarily ethnic, blood, and membership-based construct to one in which ethnicity is biologically and scientifically reinterpreted. Indeed, after the Korean War (1950–1953), South Korean biopolitics focused on redefining the collective project of nationalism around a notion of “life” that should be optimized and defended. As we show below by looking at three instances of bionationalist mobilization, the country's emerging bionationalism eclipsed traditional ethnic nationalism as the traditional ethnicity marker of “blood” became increasingly displaced by genetics (Simpson 2000, p. 3) and as other biological and scientific components, such as the stem cell or the oocyte, became important. Such new biological markers provided the means for defining national identity and also embedded the deeply transformative potentials of modern biomedicine to be put into the service of Korean bodies and the economic future of the nation. At the same time, the tendency in Korean bionationalism seemed to be not only to optimize the population through novel, technoscientific strategies, but also to “defend” the nation against microbial menace from the outside, such as bioterrorism, or epidemics of such diseases as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The emerging bionationalism with its focus on the South Korean population combined a new language and new markers for defining the nation with elements of belief in scientific progress and the furthering of populations with a politically aggressive gesture of defending the South Korean nation against microbial (and thus “invisible”) “attacks” from outside the country. The new bionationalism also implied elements of questioning and even sacrificing structures and practices of liberal democracy and citizenship. At the same time, we argue that the emerging bionationalism in South Korea is far from being a purely “top-down” mobilized, or quasi-authoritarian phenomenon. It is instead a contested terrain for political mobilization for different social groups, in which spontaneous street demonstrations and the utilization of Web 2.0 style media tools have been of particular importance (Gottweis and Kim 2010).

Healing the nation: Hwang Woo-Suk as a national hero

The South Korean veterinarian Hwang Woo-Suk is probably best known to the world as being at the center of one of the largest scientific frauds in recent medical history. But the Hwang case also offers fascinating insights into the operation and practices of contemporary biopolitics in South Korea.

One of the most competitive fields of biomedical research is stem cell and cloning, so Koreans were justifiably proud when Hwang received international acclaim for his work in that area, in particular, for two papers published in Science in 2004 and 2005. He became a national hero virtually overnight, which is uncommon for a scientist in any nation. With his work hailed as a breakthrough that would inevitably lead to significant progress in research and in industrial application, Hwang seemed to embody the pride and hope of South Korea, and he became the object of public fascination and adoration.

Ironically, until 2003 cloning had been a publicly contested topic in South Korea. From about 2000, however, central policy actors in the administration of the South Korean president, Roh Moo-Hyun, had been implementing a new strategy that would establish the nation as a global leader in human embryonic stem cell (hESC) and cloning research; Hwang Woo-Suk was the administration's ticket to fame. The new strategy implied a new legislative policy, but as it was implemented over the next five years, it created an evolving pattern of bad governance, leading to the misappropriation of funds, embezzlement, violation of good ethics, and the bending of existing and newly formed legislation. The extent of the damage has emerged only after Hwang's fall from grace at the end of 2005 (Gottweis and Kim 2006).

Hwang's March 2004 Science paper had reported the first stem cell line ever created from a cloned human embryo, a long-awaited breakthrough in cloning research, which in the past had been successful with animals but not with humans (Hwang 2004). His second Science paper, a year later, reported his success creating 11 “patient-specific” stem cell lines that genetically matched nine patients with spinal cord injury, diabetes, and an immune system disorder (Hwang et al. 2005). With the publication of that second Science paper, which described an astonishing step of somatic nuclear cell transfer (SNCT) toward possible medical application, Hwang's popularity in Korea reached a new height. It was then that stem cell research and nationalism began to merge in the public consciousness; “Hwang Woo-Suk Patriotism” began to appear, and public criticism of Hwang's research team became untenable. Early evidence of this conflation lies in statements by Hwang such as “I have stuck the Korean national flag into the heights of biotechnology, America” (DongA Ilbo 2004); “Science knows no border, but a scientist has his homeland” (Hwang, W.S. 2005); “I want to print ‘Made in Korea’ on stem cells” (DongA Ilbo 2005, Hwang, W.S. 2005). One newspaper reported that “He was offered 10 billion dollars in research funds from one state in America, but he rejected it” (JoongAng Ilbo 2004) – further proof to the Korean public that Hwang was a hero to and champion of South Korea.

The Korean public saw Hwang as someone with transformative powers, someone with the image, at least, of being capable of accomplishing what no one before him could. He was also said to have cultivated specifically “Korean” embryonic stem cells, which not only were something all Koreans shared, but also something that Koreans had first cultivated for possible treatment of devastating illnesses; both these reasons were a source of national pride. Issues that had characterized controversies over stem cell research governance in many other countries, such as the social and ethical acceptability of cloning, gradually began to disappear from public debate in South Korea, as did critical voices that had played an important role in the late 1990s (Gottweis et al. 2009). South Koreans seemed to be united behind Hwang, the government, and the project of leading the country into a biomedical revolution that would greatly benefit and honor the nation. As we see below, in this structuring of the public space, a biopolitical reality seemed to take shape in which bending existing laws and violating ethical principles were elements as much as repressing public debate and critical voices (Gottweis and Kim 2010).

Hwang increasingly began to claim that his research would have immediate applications for treatment of diseases such as Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury, which appealed to the public. These claims reached a new height when a new project, the World Stem Cell Hub, an international center for the storage of stem cell lines, was opened in Seoul on 20 October 2005 by President Roh, with many dignitaries and scientists from around the world attending. Patients were invited to apply for experimental treatment of certain debilitating illnesses. Consequently the Hub was stormed by thousands of ailing South Koreans who were seeking relief from what was often decade-long suffering. Hwang, a poor farmer's son, was seen as a hero who had won national and international acclaim by healing the wounds of a nation with the magic of the biosciences (Gottweis and Kim 2010).

But already in May 2005, the British journal Nature had published evidence of possible ethical misconduct in the Hwang lab whereby laboratory workers donated their own oocytes. The violations were denied not only by Hwang but also by leading politicians and other political and business supporters (Cyranoski 2004). One issue was that Hwang had made a point of the low figures of the voluntarily donated eggs and claimed to have used 185 eggs from 18 women for the first Science paper and 242 eggs from 18 women for the second Science paper (Hwang 2004). A later report by the South Korean National Bioethics Committee stated that from 28 November 2002 to 24 December 2005, 2221 eggs were collected from 119 women, with monetary compensation having been paid to only 66 women. Twenty-four women had donated eggs more than twice, including workers from Hwang's lab, and some donors reported serious health problems after the donation (NBC 2006).

But at the end of 2005 – Hwang was dismissed that December – these facts were not yet public. After the May 2005 issue of Nature had appeared, Koreans from all walks of life rose to the defense of their “Prof. Hwang”. As the ethical misconduct allegations expanded that spring and summer into a fraud investigation, and the downfall of Hwang began that November, the results reverberated beyond Hwang's circle of scientific collaborators in various institutions: highly visible resignations followed from policy advisors and politicians, such as the scientific advisor to the South Korean president, and the chairman of the National Bioethics Committee. The Hwang affair had evolved into a “Hwang-gate” with obvious, far-reaching political ramifications: the biotechnology stock market crashed, and the country entered a period of deep crisis, with people in a state of shock over the events (Gottweis and Kim 2010).

During this downfall of Hwang, which was triggered by pressure from outside South Korea, there were also strong voices within the country that attempted to report the accusations to the public. When in November 2005 the TV magazine PD Notebook first raised critical questions about Hwang, the PD Notebook team was flooded by protest phone calls and emails. Supporters of Hwang launched a campaign against the show by telephoning the show's sponsors to demand they withdraw their advertising, finally resulting in the complete withdrawal of PD Notebook's sponsors, which was unprecedented in South Korea's broadcasting history. When the allegations of fraud against the Hwang lab intensified, the “I Love Hwang” campaign shifted its efforts to encouraging women to donate their eggs. The membership of an Internet forum called “I Love Hwang Woo-Suk” swelled to as many as 110,000 supporters.2 It had gone online in June 2004, after Hwang's first paper was published in Science, at which time there were about 15 national Hwang Woo-Suk support groups, some of which were still active in 2006 (Kim 2006). Further related Internet sites emerged one after another.

Still, on 24 November 2005, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that there was no problem in the process of egg supply and that the affair was merely the result of a “cultural gap between the West and East”. Major mass media in South Korea supported the argument that in the discussion about Hwang Woo-Suk the national interest must prevail. In a press conference on 23 December 2005, when Hwang resigned from the position of professor at Seoul National University, he said “I declare once again that patient-specific stem cell technology is the technology of Korea” (Pressian 2005).

In early February 2006, a man who supported Hwang immolated himself. Before pouring inflammable liquid over his body, he handed out leaflets that explained he would burn himself to death in order “to unveil the truth regarding why Professor Hwang's stem cell research was suspended, to have his research resume, and to punish the conspiring groups”. The middle-aged truck driver died (Chosun Ilbo 2006), exemplifying perhaps the most extreme Hwang supporter.

Hwang Woo-Suk supporters continued to exchange information via Web 2.0 vehicles on the Internet, and an Internet forum provided updates on Hwang's situations, posted criticisms of anti-Hwang groups, and discussed demonstration plans. Rallies also continued, with the 1 March 2006 rally being the largest to show support for Hwang in Seoul. According to Hwang supporters, 20,000 to 30,000 people gathered in the rally (4000 according to the police). The messages on their pickets and stickers expressed their resolute faith in Hwang and their anger at their government: “Dr Hwang, you are the true scientist of the Republic of Korea”; “Dr Hwang, you are the victim of conspiracy”; “The government should take responsibility for draining the national wealth over stem cell”; “If you fail to protect our patent, prosecutors, you are traitors as well” (Kim 2007). In addition, supporters held seminars and led various popular campaigns that attempted to open attendance at Hwang Woo-Suk's trial, to revise the Bioethics and Biosafety Act, and to force a resumption of research by popular petition.3

Even years after the Hwang affair had occurred, ending with the 2005 dismissal of Hwang from all of his university and other official positions, support for Dr Hwang among Koreans showed no sign of abating. According to a public opinion poll released on 19 July 2008, as many as 88.4% of the respondents still believed that Hwang should be given another chance. To the question as to why they would support his resuming research, 57.7% answered that Hwang is an indispensable scientist in stem cell research, which would bring enormous wealth to the nation (I want to know it 2008). In a survey conducted by a newspaper in January 2007, 76.8% of the respondents thought that Hwang deserved a second chance (JoongAng Ilbo 2008). Although it is not possible here to explore fully the complicated details of the Hwang affair in South Korea, the case nevertheless represents a fascinating form of biopolitics that, at least temporarily, dramatically reconfigured the political order. The identification of the South Korean nation with Hwang as a hero, the mobilization of stem cell research as something that could divide the nation between patriots and those who are not, and the expectation of advancing South Korean interests and healing the South Korean people as a whole had created an exceptional constellation. Fraud, violations of standards and laws, and dubious money transfers were as much part of this constellation as the state's enthusiastic support of Hwang and the marginalization of critics. Although this case did not elude opposition within the country, the critical voices were effectively silenced as long as the pressure from outside South Korea had not become too strong to ignore. Nevertheless, as much as the South Korean state had adopted its role in this bionationalist drama, it was also played out in a decentralized manner with large numbers of individual citizens uniting through Web 2.0 media and in city streets to demonstrate their support for Professor Hwang. Thus, while the emerging biopolitical field was heavily characterized by top-down mobilization, it certainly also had a spontaneous, “uncontrolled” dimension with “bionationalistic” citizens positioning themselves as devoted followers of Professor Hwang, fighting his case – and the case of Korea – long after the government had withdrawn its support for this project.

Breeding the nation

As shown in the previous section, the question of access to female oocytes had played a key role in the Hwang affair. Securing the availability of embryos from fertility clinics and of oocytes was essential for Hwang's research. But the practices of oocyte procurement by Hwang's lab also threw a peculiar light on the politics of reproduction in South Korea. From 1985, when the first test-tube baby was born in South Korea, to 2006, when the Bioethics and Biosafety Act took effect, fertility clinics in South Korea had not been under binding regulations. As a result, doctors or hospitals developed a system of self-regulating for the procurement and storage of unused embryos in in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics (Kim 2005). This laissez-faire approach toward reproductive medicine in South Korea must be placed in the context of post-World War II trends in population politics.

The Hwang case and its bionationalistic ramifications point to the special recent history of population politics in South Korea. Since World War II, women in South Korea had been a target of population politics and were subjected to policies designed in the name of national interest. In the early 1960s South Korea was suffering from severe economic deprivation due to destruction from the Korean War and the division of the nation. As a result of in-migration of residents from North Korea and the postwar baby boom, the South Korean population was growing at an annual rate of 3%. The postwar government, which had been swept into power by a military coup, followed the then-current assumption that population increase hindered economic development, so the government consequently enforced strict birth control. Family planning policies started in 1961 and continued until the late 1980s. The government initially focused on education, promotion, and distributing contraceptives. Later, it expanded the policy, easing legal restrictions on abortions and facilitating the sterilization of women. Still later modifications resulted in granting more benefits to those who followed the state's guidelines and disadvantaging those who had more children (Lee 1989). Regional quotas were applied as part of the national family planning policy. Starting from 1962, family planning agents were dispatched to public health centers across the nation. There were cases of women undergoing compulsory sterilizations in order to meet the local quota. The government established mothers' associations for family planning in 16,823 villages; such associations were the primary distribution medium for contraceptives. Through such efforts, motherhood was subjected to the nation's policy and used as a tool for population control (Hwang, J. 2005).

At the same time, modernization quickly moved childbirth into the medical realm. South Korean biopolitics was focused not only on meeting national birthrate goals, but also on optimizing the population along cultural preferences. In 1970, only 17.6% of babies were born in hospitals; this figure had increased to 98.1% in 1991. The advancement of technology related to childbirth was followed by the introduction of IVF and the expansion of fertility clinics. Family succession based on bloodline and the cultural preference for boys played a major role in the expansion of fertility clinics in Korea (Cho 2006). As of 31 January 2006, 122 IVF clinics, 44 embryo research institutes, and 6 somatic cell cloning research institutes were registered with the Ministry of Welfare. As of 2006, a total of 93,921 human embryos were stored in 98 IVF institutes in South Korea. Four of the institutes have derived stem cell lines from surplus embryos. Human embryonic stem cells (hESC) created by the four institutes reportedly number 49 (MHW 2006).

It is in this context that the developments around Hwang Woo-Suk's project must be understood. When in 2005 questions were raised by the TV magazine PD Notebook over the issue of how oocytes were supplied, a campaign for egg donation began to emerge. Coincidentally, the “Egg Donation Foundation for research and treatment” was officially launched on the morning of the PD Notebook broadcast. The chair of the foundation said that she realized the need for egg donation when she visited Hwang's laboratory with her disabled husband the year before. She emphasized the need for an egg donation campaign by saying, “Stem cell research must continue to give hope for the patients who suffer from rare or fatal disease. Noble contribution by us, women, is absolutely critical to the research” (Maeil Business Newspaper 2005).

On 6 December 2005, a ceremony was held during which women declared their intention to donate oocytes for Hwang's stem cell research. The event, which started with the singing of the national anthem, was designed from start to finish to tap into South Koreans' nationalistic pride for Dr Hwang and to celebrate reaching 1000 pledged donors. The 200 participants left behind bouquets of the national flower and notes of encouragement for Dr Hwang. They also adorned the 700-meter path from the main gate of Veterinarian College to his laboratory with azalea flowers. A man who participated in the ceremony said that his wife and all three daughters would donate eggs (Hankook Ilbo 2005). In the end, egg donation pledges were secured from 114 women to the Egg Donation Foundation and from 1500 women to I Love Hwang. About the phenomenon, one renowned scientist said that she was “deeply moved by the news that 1000 women pledged to donate their eggs”. She added that “this demonstrates the latent energy of Korean women who never failed to step forward in times of difficulty” (OhmyNews 2006).

Oocyte donation occurs across the world, not only in South Korea (Waldby 2008). However, the rush of many women from all over South Korea – and their laudation by the mass media – to donate their eggs for Hwang's research and to further the national interest constitutes a unique incidence of women being mobilized as part of a large-scale politics of life. It reflects a biopolitical order in which those who voluntarily sacrificed one's body in the national interest are the same people who historically had been key instruments for South Korean bionationalism. In that sense, belonging to the Korean nation was defined not just through ethnicity but also through physical sacrifice in the service of scientific progress and national benefit. At the same time, just as was the case in the defense of Hwang against fraud accusations, the mobilization was hardly a centralized, top-down led process, but mainly the result of grassroots networking using Web 2.0 instruments.4 Again, the Internet and its many related new media tools had proven to be crucial in configuring biopolitics in South Korea by creating spaces and tools for political expression and mobilization.

Defending the nation against BSE

In Discipline and punish Foucault points to the origins of modern disciplinary society in establishing a system of quarantine to cope with the plague. Throughout modern history, the plague demanded discipline as a proper response (Foucault 1977, pp. 251–253). The language of the “microbiological invasion” in the form of infectious disease introduced from without, and the idea of the need of a response remained in the public and political imagination for centuries, notably in nineteenth-century immigration controls up to the post-2001 anthrax scare (Sarasin 2004).

The biopolitics of responding to a disease threat from the outside erupted in South Korea in late spring of 2008 around bovine spongiform encephalitis. BSE is a progressive neurological disorder in cattle that results from infection by an unusual transmissible agent called a prion. Prions are infectious agents comprised of a misfolded protein. The BSE epidemic originated in the United Kingdom, peaking there in January 1993. It developed into a major public health scare when strong epidemiologic and laboratory evidence accumulated for a causal association between a new human prion disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which was first reported in the United Kingdom in 1996 (CDC 2009). To date there have been three vCJD cases identified in the United States, the first in 2003. That same year, South Korea, the third largest importer of US beef, banned imports of US beef. Politically, one of the most fundamental changes that was introduced by the BSE scare was the break with a sectorized approach to food safety. The interconnection between the domains of “agriculture” and “public health” had gained new visibility and shaken the grounds of the existing “biopolitical” ordering of society (Loeber and Hajer 2006).

When on 18 April 2008 the South Korean government agreed to resume the import of US beef, as noted at the beginning of this article a growing protest movement demanded that the government overturn its decision. The prospect of a possible epidemic following the import of infected meat from the United States resulted in a mass grassroots mobilization that demanded strict state action to eliminate infection risks. Initially 10,000 people took to the streets in Seoul and other South Korean cities holdings signs that read “Bush, don't impose mad cow on Koreans”; “We support candlelight vigils at home to press for a renegotiation of the beef import deal”; “Healthy people, healthy alliance”; and “President Lee Myung-bak drowns democracy” (Korean Times, 10 June 2008). What had sparked the candlelight demonstrations was a PD Notebook broadcast on 27 April 2008, “Urgent report: is US beef really safe from mad cow disease (BSE)?” Two days later it reported that there was a high chance that a US resident who died on 9 April from neurodegenerative disease symptoms had variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the possible human form of BSE, more commonly known as mad cow disease. Quickly taken up by the mass media were statements from scientists who argued that Koreans are genetically more susceptible to the deadly animal disease.5

On the night of 2 May 2008, members of an Internet forum and others held the first candlelight vigil in Seoul, which they repeated on successive evenings. The major demand of the citizen was renegotiation of the new trade agreement. The government announced the import of US beef on 29 May, after which the Korean government rejected the citizens' demand more forcefully, dispersing protestors by force and taking many people to police stations. The topic for candlelight movement expanded into a broader critique of neo-liberalistic policies of Lee's administration such as the privatization of medical service, liberalization of education system, reduction of public service, and control of media and Internet. The BSE controversy was also broadly interpreted as a “test” for South Korean democracy, in particular in face of the more and more forceful crackdowns on the street protests.

On 10 June, a million citizens across the nation participated in candlelight demonstrations, levying accusations against the government and pressing for renegotiation of the free trade agreement. The report touched off public anger over the imports of US beef, leading to additional candlelight protests over the next 40 days. Meanwhile, the protests forced President Lee Myung-bak to replace six of his nine senior presidential aides on 20 June, hoping that the reshuffle would restore confidence in his four-month-old government. Although the US Centers for Disease Control announced on 5 May that the woman thought to be the first US victim of vCJD in fact did not die of the disease, a political dynamic had already been set in motion in which the defense of the nation from microbiological attack from without – notably from the simultaneously loved and hated United States of America – moved into the foreground of political controversy.

One of the notable characteristics of the demonstrations was that teenage students, especially young women, participated from the very start. On 3 May 2008, about 70% of the participants were middle or high school students. Whereas most of the country's earlier demonstrations had mainly been organized by nongovernmental or liberal organizations, thereafter leading to a broadening of protesters, with the BSE case spontaneous grassroots protests started the demonstrations and were joined only later by civil organizations.

This spontaneous mode of protest was probably related to a highly efficient previous mobilization through Web 2.0 instruments. Just as in the Hwang case and in the oocyte donation movement, the BSE protest movement also used the Internet, utilizing the new media tools to an even greater extent. Digital copies of TV broadcasts – such as PD Notebook – posted by individuals and circulated widely on the Internet added considerably to the political dynamics. The young students who started the demonstrations exchanged information via the Internet or mobile phone text messaging. While the major media was sidelining this issue, BSE and rally status information was quickly shared through individual blogs or Internet debate sites. The candlelight demonstrations were broadcast in real time over the Internet. Violent crackdowns by the police were documented by digital devices and spread quickly over the Internet. One Internet portal site even campaigned to impeach the president, collecting a million signatories in 29 days.

The South Korean BSE mass demonstrations point toward another important feature of contemporary bionationalism in the country. Biopolitical intervention in South Korea is not just reduced to optimizing the population, but also seems to operate in a line of defense against “microbial attack” from outside the country, with BSE just one expression of this outside challenge next to SARS or the bioterrorism scare. As we have already seen, the political mobilization against US beef exports went far beyond a forceful articulation of concerns about a public health challenge and also articulated the specific genetic vulnerability of Koreans toward BSE exposure. At the same time, the “defense” of the health and integrity of the South Korean population hardly was left to the agencies of the state, but, on the contrary, it has been adopted by a loosely organized grassroots movement pioneering Web 2.0 tools in political mobilization and attacking the government for sacrificing the health of the population in the interest of neoliberal trade liberalization. While the BSE scare had led to political response and reorganizations in many countries, the spontaneous, Web 2.0-led forms of mass protest in defense of claimed national (genetic) interest were unique to South Korea and point to the specifics of bionationalist articulation in that country.

Bionationalism in South Korea: ambiguities and prospects

As this paper attempts to show, the emerging picture of contemporary biopolitics in South Korea hardly seems to conform with some of the well-established, Western notions of today's politics of life. While we do not dispute that certainly also in South Korea the proactive, individualized (self-) management of the human body has become a feature of biopolitics – there is, for example, no question that reproductive choices have become highly individualized in South Korea – it seems that “the nation” as well as the population remain key themes in South Korean biopolitical mobilization. Biopolitics in South Korea is a contested terrain, and the emerging patterns of contestation show centralized agencies such as the state in addition to decentralized actors such as citizen groups communicating via new media/Web 2.0. tools like blogs, YouTube, and various Internet sites in a loosely structured process of defining and redefining the South Korean nation. Disciplining and self-disciplining, sacrificing and defending on a collective remain important elements of biopolitics. Optimizing the population through biomedical means seems to be as much a theme as is defending the nation against biological menace from without. At the same time, traditional markers of national identity such as blood seem to be in a process of being replaced by biomedically reconfigured markers, such as stem cells, oocytes, or collective, genetic susceptibility. Neither stem cell research and the hero status of certain prominent scientists, nor BSE as a public menace, nor shifting practices of reproductive medicine is exclusive to the South Korean experience. But what stands out in the South Korean context is how these topics have been configured as bionationalistic projects in the larger contexts of a politics of population and how new, scientifically led markers of national identity have emerged. The extent to which Web 2.0. tools have been used in such nationalist mobilizations is remarkable, not unlike what was observed in postelection Iran in June 2009. While in Western countries in the biopolitical field Web 2.0 tools play an increasingly important role – for example in patient organizations or expressions of “consumer genomics” such as DeCODEme and 23andme (Sunstein 2007, Prainsack et al. 2008) – in South Korea the new media have been extensively used in the context of bionationalistic mobilization.

In the case of Hwang Woo-Suk, this scientist's alleged success in a core field of regenerative medicine and its possible implications for therapeutic use were merged with euphoric expectations of immediate mass healing through stem cell science, and a hero cult around a charismatic scientist. The decisions by hundreds of women to donate oocytes for research came to be reframed as a collective sacrifice for the benefit of the nation, quite apart from concerns of reproductive medicine itself. In the BSE case, a trade and public health policy controversy quickly morphed into a collective concern about collective as well as genetic vulnerability to BSE, and the selling-out of national health to US interests. What stands out in the BSE case is that bionationalistic mobilization apparently does not have to be understood as a contradiction to democratic struggle. While in the Hwang case bionationalist mobilization largely operated top-down, the BSE controversy has been phrased by the protester as a symbolic battle over the freedom of speech and democratic rights. But there can be no question that this democratic battle operated in the name of South Korean citizens mobilizing in the streets a defense against a microbial attack on Korea from the outside, and thus drawing a line between South Korean patriots and those who betray them.

Although the state has played an important role in the shaping of Korean bionationalism, the emerging picture remains ambiguous: the “Hwang project” was consistent with a large-scale political-industrial mobilization in biotechnology and reproductive politics, which had been an important state project since the Korean War. But the various candlelight demonstrations in support of Hwang, the blogs, and the oocyte-donating women were neither initiated nor controlled by the government. And, as pointed out, the grassroots political mobilization against US beef imports simply took the South Korean political leadership by surprise. It seems that in South Korea a new space of biopolitics has opened up with the population as the key site of struggle, new markers of shared identity redefining the imagination of the nation, and new forms of mass protest and Web 2.0-based mobilization leading to a new political dynamic. It should not be surprising to see similar processes emerge in other countries in Asia and elsewhere, in particular where nationalism is strong and thus a potential site for biopolitical struggles.

Notes

For the following sections see also Gottweis and Kim (2010).

There were four Hwang support groups before the PD Notebook broadcast in November, after which 11 additional groups were established. For I Love Hwang Woo-Suk, the number of members rose from 10,000 before the broadcast to a high of 110,000 after the broadcast.

According to Voice of a Nation, an online newspaper that supports Hwang Woo-Suk, as of January 2008, 647,111 people signed the petition to allow Hwang to resume research; their goal is a million signatures.

Koreans are very active in Internet-based participation and sharing. Of the respondents, 91.6% have either participated in or shared, through one or more means, ranging from operation of a forum (77.85), blog, or mini web page (52.4%) to writing comments (45.6%), to copying and pasting (62.5%), or downloading of data, and to creating user-created content (UCC, a staple of Web 2.0) (43.2%) (NIDA 2006).

Following a newspaper report, according to a Korean researcher, the sequence of prion protein gene (PRNP) of 124 vCJD patients in the UK in 2004 all had Methionine-Methionine homozygosity at codon 129. Normally, British have a 50% chance of Metionine-Valine heterozygosity and a 10% chance of Valine-Valine homozygosity. Kim Young-Sun, the director of the Korea CJD Diagnostic Center, investigated PRNP of 529 normal Koreans without human BSE. According to Jeong et al. 2004, 94.33% of Koreans have Met-Met, 5.48% have Met-Val, and 0.19% have Val-Val (Jeong et al. 2004). The researchers analyzed PRNP of 150 patients with sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease similar to vCJD, resulting in an all Met-Met homozygosity at codon 129 as well (Jeong et al. 2005). Kim explained: “Only 40% of populations have Met-Met in US or UK. Therefore, it implies that Korean[s] have higher possibility to get human vBSE compared to American and British” (DongA Ilbo 2007).