Profile: Embattled S.Korean clone expert - Hwang Woo-suk

Fiftytwo-year-old Hwang recently became the central character of the ethical and autenticity scandals surrounding his team's stem cell research.

Hwang once was lavished praised all over the country as national hero for his epoch-making stem cell research.

Like a film or singer superstar, Hwang's name appeared in local media very often in the past two years.

Born on Dec. 15, 1953 in a farmer's family of South Chungcheong Province of South Korea, Hwang is the fifth child of his poor parents.

Thanks to his uncle's financial support, he went to Daejeon, a city located some 200 kilometers south to Seoul, to have his junior middle school study.

He was enrolled by Veterinary Medicine Department of Seoul National University(SNU), on of South Korean most renowned universities, in 1972.

When he was 29, he obtained Ph.D in veterinary medicine in the year of 1981 at the SNU.

He went to Hokkaido University of Japan, which was the world's leading competitor in artificial fertilization, in 1984.

There, Hwang met with world famous professors in cloning sector and held conversation with them. He relized clone is the most promising research in the bioengineering sector.

In 1987, he became a SNU professor and started his hard research work with working 17-18 hours a day and only four hours sleeping. After years of such intensive researchs, he made South Korea's first test-tube cow in 1993.

In 1999, he claimed his team cloned a pair of cows for the first time in South Korea and the fifth in the world.

He claimed his team successfuly cloned pigs in 2002 and cultivated four cows that alledged to be resistant to mad cow disease in December 2004.

His team hit headlines of international media after its paper on cloning the world's first embryonic stem cell line published in February 2004 in journal of Science.

In May 2005, his team's second paper was published as cover story of Sciense. In the paper he claimed his team for the first time in the world successfully cloned 11 different stem cells tailored to individual patients, paving the way for future development of therapies for hard-to-cure diseases, such as diabetes and Parkinsonism.

However, his fame was shadowed when he admitted in late November 2005 that his two fellow female researchers donated eggs in 2003 and a local hosptial which was responsible for providing human ova for his rearch paid money to ova donors.

Furthermore, Hwang became center of critics after the special panel of SUN released two reports over the investigation of autenticity of his second paper published by Science.

The panel tentatively concluded that Hwang's team fabricated partial results in the paper published in May 2005 and no patient- tailored embryonic stem cell lines Hwang's team claimed exists currently.

He also announced his resignation as head of the World Stem Cell Hub based in Seoul and offered to give up his professorship at the SNU respectively in late November and late December of 2005.