Seoul Survivor?

The Korea Herald keeps us all right up to the moment on the important developments and high drama of Hwang Woo-suk and the concerted efforts of a few politicians, entrepreneurs and scientists in South Korea to frighten the international science community half to death hunt down stem cell embezzlers and smoke them out of their caves:

The National Intelligence Service, the nation`s spy agency, also reportedly watches Hwang`s team members due to concerns that the nation`s groungbreaking technology may be leaked out.

Now that Schatten and Hwang have split, observers here say the three researchers should return to Korea to prevent the technology leaking. Schatten severed ties with his Hwang last month, citing ethical breaches in the procurement of human eggs.

"He secured Korean researchers who have key technology in embryonic stem cells. He could have everything for free after weeding out Hwang," said Sun Kyung, head of the Korean Artificial Organ Center.

"Schatten should send back the researchers to Korea without condition," he said.

However, one of three researchers, identified by her initial P, has apparently gone to ground with even her family members having been unable to contact her for over a week.

The woman researcher has exceptional "hand skills" in transplanting the nucleus of somatic cells to human eggs and contributed with Schatten to successfully clone the embryos of a monkey in October 2004. Whenever Hwang talked about his groundbreaking researchers, he mentioned the crucial role of P in his work.

P was also one of the two researchers who donated their own eggs to the research in May 2004 that produced the first cloned stem cells. She has remained out of reach since the reports surfaced that the two researchers contributed their eggs to the work.

The other two male researchers are experts in developing stem cells from embryos. Interestingly, one of the two, identified by his initial K, told a local TV news magazine show that some of Hwang`s stem cells may not be genuine, its producer said.

And stay tuned for the Who Shot JR Episode special program MBC Korean television will air tonight in which it will 'reveal' as a fraud the Science paper in which Hwang et al. describe the production of embryonic cells from somatic cell nuclear transfer ("therapeutic cloning").
[update: still more in the comments to this Marmot post]