The strange tale of Woo Suk Hwang keeps getting more bizarre.
The former Seoul National University cloner surprised the world in 2004 by claiming to have established a stem cell line from a cloned human embryo. In November 2005, he shocked colleagues by admitting, after denying, denying and then denying again, that he had knowingly used his graduate students’ eggs to achieve that feat. (Nature had reported this first a year and a half before.) The greater shock came the following month when it turned out that that feat had been faked. The sad trial in which he was eventually convicted of embezzlement produced other incredible stories. For example, when he could not explain some missing research expense receipts, he defended himself by claiming that he had had to pay off Russian mafia to get access to mammoth DNA.
With a 2-year delayed sentence pending, Hwang has tried to rebuild his career, and private sources helped him to build the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation.
But rumors that Hwang would rise again to great heights in faraway lands keep popping up. There have been rumors that Harvard and other top US universities were recruiting him. There were rumors that Thailand was recruiting him.
Now, in the latest twist of the Hwang tale, Korean media is reporting that Libya was trying to nail down a W153 billion (US$1=W1,127) collaboration with Hwang.
According to the Korea Times, Hwang traveled to Libya on 10 February to discuss the collaboration. According to Yonhap news, Hwang has traveled there some 10 times since 2004 and received a retainer of 600,000 euros for collaborating on stem cell research aimed at incurable diseases.
The current deal was supposed to include a research center in Libya and the transfer of cloning-related technology from Hwang. According to the Chosun Ilbo, Hyun Sang-hwan, who directs the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation founded by Hwang, Hwang was to sign a collaborative agreement with a company called DANA Bioscience and Medical Service recently established by Libya. The signing was reportedly canceled and the agreement thrown into jeopardy by the protests there. Reporters spotted Hwang at the Tripoli airport, one of 198 being evacuated by the Korean government.
No doubt this is not the end of the story.