Do we like Hwang Woo-suk?
Our score: 2 out of 10. A conviction, papers a university panel found fabricated and blame pushed onto juniors, with only a little real good set against it and no harmful words on LGBTQ+ people found.
Hwang grew up poor on a farm in Buyeo, and his father died when he was five. He decided in primary school to devote his life to cows, trained as a vet at Seoul National University and built a career on animal reproduction. He had Korea's first test-tube calf in 1993 and, in 2005, Snuppy the Afghan hound, then in 2004 the headline-grabbing claim of cloned human embryonic stem cells.
That last claim is where it all fell over. A Seoul National University panel found data and images in both his Science papers had been fabricated, the university sacked him in March 2006 and the papers were retracted. Science Insider reported he admitted ordering some of the fabrication and blamed junior researchers. At a televised press conference he said “I ask for your forgiveness”, but he also said he believed his papers were legitimate and blamed two younger colleagues, which is a pretty big asterisk on an apology.
The courts were narrower than the headlines. In 2009 a trial court convicted him of embezzling research funds and illegally buying human eggs, but acquitted him of fraud. The Supreme Court confirmed that in February 2014, with a suspended sentence of a year and a half and two years of probation. So the legal record is embezzlement and bioethics breaches, not a fraud conviction.
The recent thing is the paperwork catching up. The government first cancelled his Top Science and Technology Award in 2020, but a court tossed that for procedural flaws, so officials held a hearing and did it again. The president approved it on 14 July 2026, and the 300 million won prize looks unlikely to be recovered. In earlier litigation Hwang argued he had donated the prize money to a state research body in 2004. No public statement from him on the revocation was reported.
Since then he has rebuilt in animal cloning: first Sooam's dog service, and now camels at a biotech centre in Abu Dhabi, where he said he has cloned more than 150. In the Netflix documentary King of Clones he said that making excuses about pressure would be cowardly, and he acknowledged greed. That's more candour than his 2006 press conference, though candour alone doesn't wipe the slate. On the good side, NPR reported that Sooam clones pets for grieving owners and some dogs for police agencies, but the welfare questions sit right next to that.
So would we support him? Not as a hero. He's no hate merchant, and the real Snuppy shows he can do real science. But a conviction for embezzlement and buying human eggs, papers his own university found fabricated, and a habit of pointing at juniors is a bad record for how he treats people. A little real good, a thin harm record and a 2026 award stripped for good: that's a 2 from us.