South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on Monday extended his support to the stem cell research led by the country's famous researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who recently was in a center of controversy over his job.

While chairing a weekly meeting with his senior aides, Roh called on the current debate on Hwang's research to be concluded.

Roh also pledged that his government will continue to aid Hwang 's research project, quoted by South Korean Yonhap News Agency as saying "I expect the research should continue without a hitch to give hope to a number of patients suffering from incurable diseases."

"I believe the issue will be naturally proved as research activities are going on," Roh said. "I wish Professor Hwang would return to work as soon as possible to give hope to a number of patients suffering from incurable diseases who are waiting for the outcome of his research."

Meanwhile, South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology on Monday said in a news release to continue its support for Hwang's research and to help the team concentrate on its research.

Roh's remarks came after an apology by a local TV station on last Sunday, which said some of its producers violated journalistic ethics in covering the story on probing truth of Hwang's stem cell research by threatening and lying to some of the researchers in Hwang's team.

MBC-TV's investigative program "PD Notebook" released a series of program for a month on digging into the truth over ethical problems in Hwang's research.

The program made a deep blow to Hwang's fame who is viewed as national hero here for local people think Hwang brought South Korea's stem cell's research standing in the front line in the world.

Under growing pressure, Hwang, whose team succeeded in cloning embryonic stem cells in 2004 for the first time in the world and extracted embryonic stem cells from individual patients' somatic cells in May 2005, admitted late November some ethical problems exited in his research.

He admitted two fellow female researchers donated eggs for his research under forged names in 2003, which was viewed as a violation to the international ethical standards on bio-medical research.

Moreover, Hwang also admitted he only knew the fact recently a local hospital, who provided human eggs to Hwang's research, gave compensation to ova donors two years ago.

Taking responsibility for those unethical matters, Hwang resigned from the head of the World Stem Cell Hub based in South Korea.

After Hwang's acknowledgment, the MBC's "PD Notebook" further claimed some of the stem cells Hwang's team have produced do not genetically match those of patient donors based on a series of independent DNA tests.

Hwang's team refuted the MBC's claim, saying the tests were proceeded in a wrong way. But Hwang himself did not appear to reject the MBC's claim.

After the MBC made apology to the audience for some of the journalists' coercion actions during the coverage of Hwang's research, intensed criticism went to the TV station.

Source: Xinhua