Newsmaker

Disgraced Hwang seeks pardon

(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-12 14:55

SEOUL, South Korea - A disgraced South Korean researcher asked his nation's pardon Thursday for fraudulent claims of stem cell breakthroughs, but said junior scientists deceived him and should share blame for the scandal.

"I ask for your forgiveness," Hwang Woo-suk told a nationally televised press conference from Seoul in his first public appearance in nearly three weeks. "I feel so miserable that it's difficult even to say sorry."

South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk apologizes to nation at National Press Center in Seoul, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006. Disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk asked his fellow South Koreans for forgiveness Thursday at his first public appearance in almost three weeks. [AP]

Seoul National University, where Hwang is a professor, on Tuesday issued a final report that he fabricated landmark published claims in 2004 and 2005 to have cloned a human embryo and extracted stem cells from it.

"The use of fake data ... is what I have to take full responsibility for as first author. I acknowledge all of that and apologize once again," Hwang said.

However, Hwang repeated his earlier claims that he was deceived about the data by two junior scientists at a partner research hospital, and said that he believed that his papers were legitimate when they were published.

He said the junior researchers lied to him when they said they successfully culled and grew stem cells from human embryos cloned by Hwang's team.