Hwang Woo-suk |
By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
Disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk seems to have returned to his old ways.
After finishing his final statements at his trial in Seoul, Monday, in which the prosecution sought a four-year jail term for him, Hwang shook hands with the two prosecutors who investigated him.
It was not an act of courtesy but looked like the meeting of old friends as Hwang held the hands of the two prosecutors for quite a while and exchanged jokes.
His supporters applauded after hearing Hwang's 10-minute statement asking for the mercy of the court and his co-accused indicted for embezzlement and bioethics law violations.
"For the past three years after he was investigated by the prosecution, Hwang has been mostly downbeat," said a source close to him.
"But he appears to have regained his trademark of strong self-confidence for some reason. Maybe he's made a breakthrough in his research or has almost reached a scientific exploit."
Indeed, Hwang hinted that he would produce research results soon.
"I made a promise to the Korean people in my last press conference on Jan. 12, 2006. I will keep the promise of creating genuine patient-specific stem cells," Hwang said during the hearing. On Jan. 12, 2006, Hwang contended that his team would have the technology to clone authentic stem cell lines in six months.
"I would keep the promise in the not-so-distant future if I were given another opportunity. Then, I hope to visit with my supporters the room where I was questioned for 63 days," he said.
The 57-year-old even said that he is ready to work together with Kim Sun-jong, another suspect whom Hwang accused of switching some of the stem cell lines.
"Kim was so diligent a researcher. If he regrets his mistakes and doubles his efforts as a scientist, I want to include him in my team," Hwang said.
While begging for the clemency of the court for other suspects and himself, Hwang did not say anything about professor Lee Byeong-chun at Seoul National University, once his top lieutenant.
"They have been at odds since the investigation started. Lee refused to accept Hwang's proposal to work together," the source said.
"Plus, Lee employed his own lawyer instead of depending on the same one as Hwang. That hastened the break-up between the two."
Hwang also said for the first time that he suffered from liver cancer two decades ago and had a substantial part severed.
Before, people knew Hwang had experienced a life-threatening disease in the 1980s but were unaware of what it was.
He stepped into the global spotlight in 2004 and 2005 when his experiments on human embryonic stem cells were twice printed by academic journal Science.
However, his claims on the tailor-made stem cells turned out to be hoaxes, and were mostly created by stem cell lines from regular, not cloned, embryos.
This prompted Science to retract the two papers and Hwang was investigated over allegations of embezzlement of research funds and violations of the bioethics law.
After falling from the status of national hero to global scientific pariah, Hwang continued research on stem cell cloning.
As he failed to gain approval in Korea, he moved his team offshore.
His team has proved that they are still ahead of the curve as far as cloning is concerned by succeeding in dog cloning several times.
The world's first canine clone, named Snuppy, was verified as the real deal.
Hwang also claims that the No. 1 stem cell line, which was featured in the 2004 Science article, was indeed extracted from the cloned embryo.
voc200@koreatimes.co.kr
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살인 후 119 신고해 '사체 처리해달라' 경악
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