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Staging Scientific Selves and Pluripotent Cells in South Korea and Japan

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Global Perspectives on Stem Cell Technologies

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Abstract

The scientific scandals that erupted in Japan and South Korea have spawned considerable reflection on the ethical, legal, and scientific oversight of stem cell research. The very public and prolonged unraveling of the peer-reviewed and published stem cell research claims of South Korean professor Hwang Woo-suk in 2005 and Japanese scientist Haruko Obokata in 2014 captured, respectively, the attention of the Korean and the Japanese publics. In this chapter, we explore how Obokata’s and Hwang’s public presences and personal narratives—created in conjuncture with the Korean and Japanese news media—helped produce international stem cell research results. Chapter shows how despite the gradual unfolding and the extensive media coverage of these international stem cell scandals, certain underlying but decidedly surreptitious links between the staging or presentation of the ‘successful’ stem cell scientists and faith in the production of powerful pluripotent cells remained persistently intact.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Sleeboom-Faulkner and Hwang (2012) for an examination of some of the differences between Japan’s and South Korea’s human embryonic stem cell research (hESR)–related decision-making processes and differences in the degree of the national public’s participation in the discussion of hESR-related bioethical issues, among other things.

  2. 2.

    An investigative committee at Seoul National University, where Hwang Woo-suk was employed when this embryonic stem cell line (NT-1) was created, concluded in their report that the embryonic stem cells called NT-1 had been derived from a cell that underwent parthenogenesis rather than somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).

  3. 3.

    See https://stap-hope-page.com/. Accessed October 2016.

  4. 4.

    Although Hwang clearly did face some internal domestic competition, he was receiving, by far, the most government funding and support. See Kim (2011) for an account of how this high level of government funding may have increased Hwang’s perception of the competitive pressures he faced within South Korea.

  5. 5.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPg99dyp694&feature=youtu.be (0:16). First broadcast January 2014. Accessed 25 May 2016.

  6. 6.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPg99dyp694&feature=youtu.be (2:46). First broadcast January 2014. Accessed 25 May 2016.

  7. 7.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPg99dyp694&feature=youtu.be (3:04). First broadcast January 2014. Accessed 25 May 2016.

  8. 8.

    The designer here is Vivienne West, remembered for her early punk style. Fukumitsu (2014) notes that Vivienne West was popular in 1980s Japan but has more recently come to signify something more unique and edgy than the more commonplace uniqlo styles.

  9. 9.

    http://www.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/column/20140327/390016/?rt=nocnt. Accessed 25 May 2016.

  10. 10.

    See conversation between News Watch 9’s Kensuke Okoshi and science expert Mushiaki Hideki. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPg99dyp694&feature=youtu.be (12:28–12:53). Accessed 25 May 2016.

  11. 11.

    Hwang writes, ‘I believe that there are hardly any scientists who conduct research only because of their own curiosity or for economic profit. Such motivations would make it difficult to sustain the extreme patience that the [scientific] discovery process demands. The impetus or inspiration which helps scientists continue on despite great disappointment is an abiding love and interest in people and the world they live in’ (Hwang et al. 2004, p. 155). See also Hwang et al. (2004, p. 33) for a similar argument.

  12. 12.

    We readily acknowledge a number of factors—of significance, South Korean expectations of gaining economic wealth and financial stability from stem cell technologies (see Kim Geun Bae 2007 or Kim Tae-Ho 2008 for a more extensive discussion of these factors). Nevertheless, it is important to remember that Hwang’s stem cell research was publicly imagined as benefiting both ‘global humanity’ and the ‘Korean nation’. In this context, ‘nationalism’ or ‘national interests’, which are too often automatically associated with an exclusionary provincialism, become a form of ‘universalism’. Thus, for these and other reasons, we (like Leo Kim 2011, p. 215, and Sang-Hyun Kim 2014, p. 300) disagree with Gottweis and Kim’s (2010) characterization of the South Korean public’s support for Hwang and his human embryonic stem cell research as ‘bio-nationalism’.

  13. 13.

    It is important to remember that Obokata’s own personal narrative as it appears in On that day emerged only after the STAP scandal had attracted much attention and approximately two years after the first 2014 press conference that introduced Obokata to the Japanese public. In contrast, Hwang Woo-suk had appeared in national (and international) news many years prior to the eruption of his stem cell research-related scandal. Thus, elements of Hwang’s narrative and life story had already been presented to the South Korean press long before the publication of Hwang’s influential autobiographical story.

  14. 14.

    In 2005, at least 12 Korean-language books for children and young-adult readers were published about Hwang Woo-suk’s life story (Cheon 2006, p. 412).

  15. 15.

    In addition to Hwang Woo-suk, Choi Jaecheon, an evolutionary biologist who studied with E.O. Wilson, and the painter Kim Byungjong, appears in My Stories of Life.

  16. 16.

    Hwang concludes that cows are ‘sad but beautiful beings’ (p. 63–64).

  17. 17.

    In 1999, Hwang Woo-suk announced the birth of a ‘cloned’ dairy cow named Splendor by the head of Korea’s Ministry of Science and Technology at Hwang’s request. Approximately a month later, news of another cloned cow named Hwang Jin-I by then-Korean President Kim Dae-jung was announced (Kim Geun Bae 2007).

  18. 18.

    Kim Geun Bae (2007) particularly focuses on how Hwang’s work with the artificial insemination and the cloning of cows laid the foundations for his later work with cloning human embryos and stem cell research.

  19. 19.

    ‘My mother—in sacrificing everything for her children—was like a cow [sacrificing all]’ (p. 51).

  20. 20.

    Consider, for instance, the half-humorous words of a male Hwang supporter in his thirties: ‘I have never loved anyone like Dr. Hwang. I spent tremendous time in Hwang-supporting activities. If I had invested so much effort like this, I could have had a British woman from a very wealthy family [laugh]’. See Kim Jongyoung (2009, p. 679).

  21. 21.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPg99dyp694&feature=youtu.be (0:16). First broadcast January 2014. Accessed 25 May 2016.

  22. 22.

    A Japanese co-worker who Obokata worked with at Harvard University describes Obokata as a ‘gambaruya-san’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPg99dyp694&feature=youtu.be. First broadcast January 2014.

  23. 23.

    See http://en.sooam.com/dogcn/sub01.html. Accessed December 2016.

  24. 24.

    See http://www.myfriendagain.com/dog_cloning_story.html. Accessed 25 May 2016.

  25. 25.

    Ibid.

  26. 26.

    See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92RHJ6RStfE

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ithaca, NY, USA

    Marcie Middlebrooks

  2. Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Hazuki Shimono

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  1. Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland

    Aditya Bharadwaj

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Middlebrooks, M., Shimono, H. (2018). Staging Scientific Selves and Pluripotent Cells in South Korea and Japan. In: Bharadwaj, A. (eds) Global Perspectives on Stem Cell Technologies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63787-7_4

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