Korea, South

SOUTH KOREA HAS made stem cell research headlines several times, thanks both to the use of cord blood cells in treating spinal cord injury and to the research fraud scandal of Hwang Woo—Suk. Similar to many other Asian nations, South Korea is more permissive of embryonic human stem cell research than most Western countries. This difference in attitude is often credited to the fact that Asian countries lack a history of abortion debates, which in the Western world have put a premium on unborn human life and have underscored the beliefs of at least some Christian Westerners that life begins at conception or during gestation. Though South Korea has been subject to diligent Christian missions, especially in the years since the Korean War, its philosophical and moral heritage remains fundamentally Confucian.

Though Confucius does not in his writings specify the moment at which life begins, any more than the Bible does, Confucian tradition holds that life—personhood, humanity, selfhood—begins at birth. Personhood requires the presence of a psyche, a mind, an awareness of some sort; the Western Christian idea of a soul that resides in the unborn fetus is a foreign one to most Confucians, and the embryo does not have the special mystique for them that it seems to have for so many Westerners. This is not to say that it is treated casually or that South Koreans support human embryonic stem cell research unanimously.

On November 25, 2004, a team of researchers from Chosun University, Seoul National University, and the Seoul Cord Blood Bank reported the successful transplant of multipotent adult stem cells isolated from umbilical cord blood. The recipient of the cells (Hwang Mi—Soon, age 37 at the time) was a spinal cord injury patient who subsequently recovered her mobility and ability to walk after 19 years in a wheelchair. Within two weeks, she was able to move her hips; two weeks after that, she was walking with the assistance of a walker. Magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scans showed regeneration of the spinal cord, though Western commentators warned that the recovery could be coincidental.

Not long after the Hwang Mi—Soon case, South Korea published its Bioethics and Biosafety Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2005. The act set out guidelines for Korean human embryo stem cell research as follows: human cloning is prohibited; producing embryos for anything other than the purpose of pregnancy is likewise prohibited (in other words, there is a ban on “embryo farms” producing embryos for research or other purposes); embryos that have been stored for more than five years may only be used for research on contraception, infertility, the cure of rare or incurable disease (as decreed by the president), or other research that has been approved by the president and the Bioethics Committee, and in such cases, research may only be conducted on embryos in which embryological [Page 291]primitive streaks have not yet appeared; and somatic cell nucleus transfer shall not be conducted except in the course of research to cure rare diseases or those as yet incurable by other means.

...