South Korea's 'stem cell hero' Hwang Woo-suk faked his breakthrough cloning results

Hwang Woo-suk, a veterinarian and researcher at Seoul National University, was celebrated as a national hero in South Korea — the 'Pride of Korea' — for what appeared to be a historic breakthrough. In 2004 and 2005 he published two landmark papers in the journal Science claiming to have created human embryonic stem cells by cloning, a feat that promised to revolutionize medicine. He became one of the most famous scientists in the world.

Cracks appeared when the journal Nature reported ethical concerns: Hwang had used eggs from his own graduate students and from a black market, a serious violation of research ethics. Hwang at first denied the allegations but admitted they were true in November 2005. Soon after, the scientific data behind his cloning claims was found to be fabricated — the celebrated results had been faked.

The fall was swift and total. Seoul National University dismissed Hwang in 2006, the South Korean government canceled his funding and barred him from stem-cell research, and Science retracted the papers. In 2009 he was convicted of embezzlement and bioethics violations and given a suspended prison sentence. The 'Hwang affair' became one of the most prominent cases of scientific fraud of the 2000s, and a cautionary tale about what happens when a nation's pride is invested in a single scientist's results.