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Bionationalism, stem cells, BSE, and Web 2.0 in South Korea: toward the
reconfiguration of biopolitics
Herbert Gottweis a; Byoungsoo Kim b
a
Department of Political Science, Life-Science-Governance Research Platform, University of Vienna, Vienna,
Austria b Department of Science and Technology Studies, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea
To cite this Article Gottweis, Herbert and Kim, Byoungsoo(2009)'Bionationalism, stem cells, BSE, and Web 2.0 in South Korea: toward
the reconfiguration of biopolitics',New Genetics and Society,28:3,223 — 239
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14636770903162437
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14636770903162437
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New Genetics and Society
Vol. 28, No. 3, September 2009, 223– 239
Introduction
“Go away, mad cow!” shouted a protest leader from a podium in front of Seoul City
Hall in early June 2008. The crowd of 30,000 people took up the chant, pumping
their fists in the air. In Seoul and indeed all over South Korea, people took to the
streets and, holding lighted candles, protested against the import of US beef,
driven by their concern that the imported meat could transmit to the Korean
people the deadly Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a human variant of bovine spongiform
Corresponding author. Email: herbert.gottweis@univie.ac.at
encephalitis (BSE) (Korean Times, 1 June 2008). This worry was based on the fact
that the Korean government just recently had signed a trade treaty with the United
States that lifted a five-year ban on US beef imports to Korea. The resulting
grassroots protests not only reflected the public’s lack of trust in the South Korean
government’s public health strategies, and a crisis in democracy. They also
pointed to the phenomenon of a strong tendency in the South Korea polity toward
biopolitical mobilizations and countermobilizations around the image of the
nation defined through race and ethnicity, and under pressure to be healed,
protected, or advanced through political intervention.
The term biopolitics is closely related to the seminal work of Michel Foucault,
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but its meaning is subject to continuous renegotiation in the social sciences and
humanities. Foucault has pointed to the significant historical transition contem-
poraneous with the shaping of industrial capitalism, in which emphasis shifted
from the primacy of sovereignty, law, and coercion or force “to take life” to
the development of new forms of power constitutive of life. Such processes of
subjectification can occur in the form of the subjection of individuals to tech-
niques of domination or through subtler techniques of the self. This power of
life co-evolved in two forms: disciplining the body and regulating populations.
Whereas the former had as its object the individual, the latter addressed itself
explicitly to the “ensemble of the population” as a field of shaping and forging.
These two strategies constituted the two poles around which the power over
life was organized. The then-emerging biopolitics focused on the administration
of life, in particular on the level of populations, and was concerned with
matters of life and death – with birth, health, illness, and other processes that
optimized the life of a population (Foucault 1979, Dean 1999, p. 99). In this
model, the government and the state collected, collated, and calculated data on
the characteristics of the population (births, deaths, rates of disease, etc.), to be
complemented by those on individuals who engage in practices of “self-govern-
ment” (Rose 2001). Despite the fact that biopower was not an exclusive project
of the state but was effected through institutions such as family, health care,
and the human sciences, Foucault argued, the state nevertheless played a
central role in coordinating and steering biopolitics. At the same time, Foucault
interpreted the locus of intervention of biopolitics to be the human body.
Related to the idea of disciplining and steering human bodies was the idea of
panopticism as the essence of social control (Foucault 1977), that is, the desire
to direct behavior through the imposition of a totalizing and instrumental ration-
alism (Sewell 1998). This desire incorporated a need to know as much about
individuals as possible, a need pursued through the deployment of instruments
of measurement, enumeration, and rationalization. Such intense scrutiny not
only extracted information about the activities of individuals, but it also went a
long way toward shaping their subjectivity as individuals who saw themselves
as they are defined through surveillance (Sewell 1998). Not only were the
bodies of modern biopolitics constituted and controlled through methods of
New Genetics and Society 225
disciplining and surveillance, or guided through care of the self, these bodies were
also territorialized in the context of the modern nation-state. This government of
life operated within the space constituted by the state and was defined through the
idea of the nation, in whose name and in defense of its population modern wars
were waged.
But, as has been argued by Nikolas Rose, the ideal of the omnipresent state that
would shape, coordinate, and direct the affairs in all sectors of society today has lost
its grip on the public imagination. Accordingly, Rose, argues, in the health field
the focus has moved from “society as a whole” to “risky individuals”, individual
susceptibility (to genetic disease, for example), and, accordingly, to “risk groups”
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(Rose 2001). The proactive, individualized management of the human body has
become a core element of collective and individual strategies of health maintenance
and thus of contemporary biopolitics (Rose 2007).
The idea that biopolitics no longer operates in a space defined by a territory, a
nation, or populations (Rose 2007) certainly describes crucial shifts in the unfold-
ing of contemporary biopolitics. However, it needs to be questioned to what extent
this notion of biopolitics does not conflict with the some developments that can be
observed at least in non-Western constellations (Glasner and Bharadwaj 2009,
Sleeboom-Faulkner 2009). As Susan Greenhalgh puts it:
Rose’s sweeping generalizations about “the vital politics of our century” . . . might be
appropriate for the advanced liberal societies of “the West” (though even there we
should exercise caution), but the world of the twenty-first century may no longer
find its center in the West. When we consider the rest of the world – which includes
four-fifths of the global population, the rising global powers of China and India,
with their very different histories and political rationalities and their more collectivist
mentalities, and the ongoing reorganization of power at transnational and global
levels – a different conclusion seems warranted. (Greenhalgh 2009, p. 206)
Although China offers interesting insights into a reality of biopolitics that is still
strongly determined by the overarching power of the state and its iron-handed
approach toward population politics, the picture is more ambiguous in South
Korea. Many elements of biopolitics that can be seen in China are also present
in South Korea, but the much more open character of the South Korean polity
seems to have given rise to a strongly nationalistic version of biopolitics in
which the imagining and reimagining of the nation has become a central but also
highly contested terrain. Web 2.0 tools have played a key role in this context.
We will further develop this argument first by theoretically detailing the concept
of bionationalism. We will then discuss three recent instances of bionationalist
mobilization in Korea: the case of the stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-Suk, the
political conceptualization of women in South Korea as oocyte donors, and the
2008 mass demonstrations against lifting the ban on US beef in South Korea.
These moments in current South Korean bionationalism seem to point toward
the emergence of a novel configuration of biopolitics in that country.
226 H. Gottweis and B. Kim
Bionationalism as a concept
Contemporary social studies study nationalism closely (Day and Thompson
2004).1 Claims about its demise in the age of globalization contrast with counter-
claims pointing at the rise of various forms of ethnic nationalism, or the prediction
of a revival of nationalism in the wake of the collapse of the international financial
system in 2008. Historically there have been two camps of thought on nationalism:
one side sees militarism, war, irrationalism, and ethnocentrism as resulting from
nationalism, whereas the other side sees nationalism as forwarding the positive
values of democracy, social integration, and citizenship. Brubaker characterizes
the debate as being between a civic understanding of nationalism that is seen by
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alism seemed to be not only to optimize the population through novel, technoscien-
tific strategies, but also to “defend” the nation against microbial menace from the
outside, such as bioterrorism, or epidemics of such diseases as severe acute respir-
atory syndrome (SARS) or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The emerging bionational-
ism with its focus on the South Korean population combined a new language
and new markers for defining the nation with elements of belief in scientific pro-
gress and the furthering of populations with a politically aggressive gesture of
defending the South Korean nation against microbial (and thus “invisible”)
“attacks” from outside the country. The new bionationalism also implied elements
of questioning and even sacrificing structures and practices of liberal democracy
and citizenship. At the same time, we argue that the emerging bionationalism in
South Korea is far from being a purely “top-down” mobilized, or quasi-authoritar-
ian phenomenon. It is instead a contested terrain for political mobilization for
different social groups, in which spontaneous street demonstrations and the utiliz-
ation of Web 2.0 style media tools have been of particular importance (Gottweis
and Kim 2010).
Korean president, Roh Moo-Hyun, had been implementing a new strategy that would
establish the nation as a global leader in human embryonic stem cell (hESC) and
cloning research; Hwang Woo-Suk was the administration’s ticket to fame. The new
strategy implied a new legislative policy, but as it was implemented over the next
five years, it created an evolving pattern of bad governance, leading to the misappro-
priation of funds, embezzlement, violation of good ethics, and the bending of existing
and newly formed legislation. The extent of the damage has emerged only after
Hwang’s fall from grace at the end of 2005 (Gottweis and Kim 2006).
Hwang’s March 2004 Science paper had reported the first stem cell line ever
created from a cloned human embryo, a long-awaited breakthrough in cloning
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research, which in the past had been successful with animals but not with
humans (Hwang 2004). His second Science paper, a year later, reported his
success creating 11 “patient-specific” stem cell lines that genetically matched
nine patients with spinal cord injury, diabetes, and an immune system disorder
(Hwang et al. 2005). With the publication of that second Science paper, which
described an astonishing step of somatic nuclear cell transfer (SNCT) toward poss-
ible medical application, Hwang’s popularity in Korea reached a new height. It was
then that stem cell research and nationalism began to merge in the public conscious-
ness; “Hwang Woo-Suk Patriotism” began to appear, and public criticism of
Hwang’s research team became untenable. Early evidence of this conflation lies
in statements by Hwang such as “I have stuck the Korean national flag into the
heights of biotechnology, America” (DongA Ilbo 2004); “Science knows no
border, but a scientist has his homeland” (Hwang, W.S. 2005); “I want to print
‘Made in Korea’ on stem cells” (DongA Ilbo 2005, Hwang, W.S. 2005). One news-
paper reported that “He was offered 10 billion dollars in research funds from one
state in America, but he rejected it” (JoongAng Ilbo 2004) – further proof to the
Korean public that Hwang was a hero to and champion of South Korea.
The Korean public saw Hwang as someone with transformative powers,
someone with the image, at least, of being capable of accomplishing what no
one before him could. He was also said to have cultivated specifically “Korean”
embryonic stem cells, which not only were something all Koreans shared, but
also something that Koreans had first cultivated for possible treatment of devastat-
ing illnesses; both these reasons were a source of national pride. Issues that had
characterized controversies over stem cell research governance in many other
countries, such as the social and ethical acceptability of cloning, gradually began
to disappear from public debate in South Korea, as did critical voices that had
played an important role in the late 1990s (Gottweis et al. 2009). South Koreans
seemed to be united behind Hwang, the government, and the project of leading
the country into a biomedical revolution that would greatly benefit and honor the
nation. As we see below, in this structuring of the public space, a biopolitical
reality seemed to take shape in which bending existing laws and violating ethical
principles were elements as much as repressing public debate and critical voices
(Gottweis and Kim 2010).
New Genetics and Society 229
Hwang increasingly began to claim that his research would have immediate
applications for treatment of diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord
injury, which appealed to the public. These claims reached a new height when a
new project, the World Stem Cell Hub, an international center for the storage of
stem cell lines, was opened in Seoul on 20 October 2005 by President Roh, with
many dignitaries and scientists from around the world attending. Patients were
invited to apply for experimental treatment of certain debilitating illnesses. Conse-
quently the Hub was stormed by thousands of ailing South Koreans who were
seeking relief from what was often decade-long suffering. Hwang, a poor farmer’s
son, was seen as a hero who had won national and international acclaim by healing
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the wounds of a nation with the magic of the biosciences (Gottweis and Kim 2010).
But already in May 2005, the British journal Nature had published evidence of
possible ethical misconduct in the Hwang lab whereby laboratory workers donated
their own oocytes. The violations were denied not only by Hwang but also by
leading politicians and other political and business supporters (Cyranoski 2004).
One issue was that Hwang had made a point of the low figures of the voluntarily
donated eggs and claimed to have used 185 eggs from 18 women for the first
Science paper and 242 eggs from 18 women for the second Science paper
(Hwang 2004). A later report by the South Korean National Bioethics Committee
stated that from 28 November 2002 to 24 December 2005, 2221 eggs were
collected from 119 women, with monetary compensation having been paid to
only 66 women. Twenty-four women had donated eggs more than twice, including
workers from Hwang’s lab, and some donors reported serious health problems after
the donation (NBC 2006).
But at the end of 2005 – Hwang was dismissed that December – these facts were
not yet public. After the May 2005 issue of Nature had appeared, Koreans from all
walks of life rose to the defense of their “Prof. Hwang”. As the ethical misconduct
allegations expanded that spring and summer into a fraud investigation, and the
downfall of Hwang began that November, the results reverberated beyond
Hwang’s circle of scientific collaborators in various institutions: highly visible res-
ignations followed from policy advisors and politicians, such as the scientific
advisor to the South Korean president, and the chairman of the National Bioethics
Committee. The Hwang affair had evolved into a “Hwang-gate” with obvious,
far-reaching political ramifications: the biotechnology stock market crashed, and
the country entered a period of deep crisis, with people in a state of shock over
the events (Gottweis and Kim 2010).
During this downfall of Hwang, which was triggered by pressure from outside
South Korea, there were also strong voices within the country that attempted to
report the accusations to the public. When in November 2005 the TV magazine
PD Notebook first raised critical questions about Hwang, the PD Notebook team
was flooded by protest phone calls and emails. Supporters of Hwang launched a cam-
paign against the show by telephoning the show’s sponsors to demand they withdraw
their advertising, finally resulting in the complete withdrawal of PD Notebook’s
230 H. Gottweis and B. Kim
sponsors, which was unprecedented in South Korea’s broadcasting history. When the
allegations of fraud against the Hwang lab intensified, the “I Love Hwang” campaign
shifted its efforts to encouraging women to donate their eggs. The membership of an
Internet forum called “I Love Hwang Woo-Suk” swelled to as many as 110,000 sup-
porters.2 It had gone online in June 2004, after Hwang’s first paper was published in
Science, at which time there were about 15 national Hwang Woo-Suk support groups,
some of which were still active in 2006 (Kim 2006). Further related Internet sites
emerged one after another.
Still, on 24 November 2005, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that
there was no problem in the process of egg supply and that the affair was merely the
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result of a “cultural gap between the West and East”. Major mass media in South
Korea supported the argument that in the discussion about Hwang Woo-Suk the
national interest must prevail. In a press conference on 23 December 2005, when
Hwang resigned from the position of professor at Seoul National University, he
said “I declare once again that patient-specific stem cell technology is the techno-
logy of Korea” (Pressian 2005).
In early February 2006, a man who supported Hwang immolated himself. Before
pouring inflammable liquid over his body, he handed out leaflets that explained he
would burn himself to death in order “to unveil the truth regarding why Professor
Hwang’s stem cell research was suspended, to have his research resume, and to
punish the conspiring groups”. The middle-aged truck driver died (Chosun Ilbo
2006), exemplifying perhaps the most extreme Hwang supporter.
Hwang Woo-Suk supporters continued to exchange information via Web 2.0
vehicles on the Internet, and an Internet forum provided updates on Hwang’s situ-
ations, posted criticisms of anti-Hwang groups, and discussed demonstration plans.
Rallies also continued, with the 1 March 2006 rally being the largest to show
support for Hwang in Seoul. According to Hwang supporters, 20,000 to 30,000
people gathered in the rally (4000 according to the police). The messages on their
pickets and stickers expressed their resolute faith in Hwang and their anger at their
government: “Dr Hwang, you are the true scientist of the Republic of Korea”;
“Dr Hwang, you are the victim of conspiracy”; “The government should take
responsibility for draining the national wealth over stem cell”; “If you fail to
protect our patent, prosecutors, you are traitors as well” (Kim 2007). In addition,
supporters held seminars and led various popular campaigns that attempted to
open attendance at Hwang Woo-Suk’s trial, to revise the Bioethics and Biosafety
Act, and to force a resumption of research by popular petition.3
Even years after the Hwang affair had occurred, ending with the 2005 dismissal of
Hwang from all of his university and other official positions, support for Dr Hwang
among Koreans showed no sign of abating. According to a public opinion poll
released on 19 July 2008, as many as 88.4% of the respondents still believed that
Hwang should be given another chance. To the question as to why they would
support his resuming research, 57.7% answered that Hwang is an indispensable
scientist in stem cell research, which would bring enormous wealth to the nation
New Genetics and Society 231
part of this constellation as the state’s enthusiastic support of Hwang and the margin-
alization of critics. Although this case did not elude opposition within the country,
the critical voices were effectively silenced as long as the pressure from outside
South Korea had not become too strong to ignore. Nevertheless, as much as the
South Korean state had adopted its role in this bionationalist drama, it was also
played out in a decentralized manner with large numbers of individual citizens
uniting through Web 2.0 media and in city streets to demonstrate their support for
Professor Hwang. Thus, while the emerging biopolitical field was heavily character-
ized by top-down mobilization, it certainly also had a spontaneous, “uncontrolled”
dimension with “bionationalistic” citizens positioning themselves as devoted
followers of Professor Hwang, fighting his case – and the case of Korea – long
after the government had withdrawn its support for this project.
an annual rate of 3%. The postwar government, which had been swept into power by
a military coup, followed the then-current assumption that population increase hin-
dered economic development, so the government consequently enforced strict birth
control. Family planning policies started in 1961 and continued until the late 1980s.
The government initially focused on education, promotion, and distributing contra-
ceptives. Later, it expanded the policy, easing legal restrictions on abortions and
facilitating the sterilization of women. Still later modifications resulted in granting
more benefits to those who followed the state’s guidelines and disadvantaging those
who had more children (Lee 1989). Regional quotas were applied as part of the
national family planning policy. Starting from 1962, family planning agents were
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dispatched to public health centers across the nation. There were cases of women
undergoing compulsory sterilizations in order to meet the local quota. The govern-
ment established mothers’ associations for family planning in 16,823 villages; such
associations were the primary distribution medium for contraceptives. Through such
efforts, motherhood was subjected to the nation’s policy and used as a tool for popu-
lation control (Hwang, J. 2005).
At the same time, modernization quickly moved childbirth into the medical realm.
South Korean biopolitics was focused not only on meeting national birthrate goals,
but also on optimizing the population along cultural preferences. In 1970, only 17.6%
of babies were born in hospitals; this figure had increased to 98.1% in 1991. The
advancement of technology related to childbirth was followed by the introduction
of IVF and the expansion of fertility clinics. Family succession based on bloodline
and the cultural preference for boys played a major role in the expansion of fertility
clinics in Korea (Cho 2006). As of 31 January 2006, 122 IVF clinics, 44 embryo
research institutes, and 6 somatic cell cloning research institutes were registered
with the Ministry of Welfare. As of 2006, a total of 93,921 human embryos were
stored in 98 IVF institutes in South Korea. Four of the institutes have derived
stem cell lines from surplus embryos. Human embryonic stem cells (hESC)
created by the four institutes reportedly number 49 (MHW 2006).
It is in this context that the developments around Hwang Woo-Suk’s project must
be understood. When in 2005 questions were raised by the TV magazine PD Note-
book over the issue of how oocytes were supplied, a campaign for egg donation
began to emerge. Coincidentally, the “Egg Donation Foundation for research and
treatment” was officially launched on the morning of the PD Notebook broadcast.
The chair of the foundation said that she realized the need for egg donation
when she visited Hwang’s laboratory with her disabled husband the year before.
She emphasized the need for an egg donation campaign by saying, “Stem cell
research must continue to give hope for the patients who suffer from rare or fatal
disease. Noble contribution by us, women, is absolutely critical to the research”
(Maeil Business Newspaper 2005).
On 6 December 2005, a ceremony was held during which women declared their
intention to donate oocytes for Hwang’s stem cell research. The event, which started
with the singing of the national anthem, was designed from start to finish to tap into
New Genetics and Society 233
South Koreans’ nationalistic pride for Dr Hwang and to celebrate reaching 1000
pledged donors. The 200 participants left behind bouquets of the national flower
and notes of encouragement for Dr Hwang. They also adorned the 700-meter path
from the main gate of Veterinarian College to his laboratory with azalea flowers.
A man who participated in the ceremony said that his wife and all three daughters
would donate eggs (Hankook Ilbo 2005). In the end, egg donation pledges were
secured from 114 women to the Egg Donation Foundation and from 1500 women
to I Love Hwang. About the phenomenon, one renowned scientist said that she
was “deeply moved by the news that 1000 women pledged to donate their eggs”.
She added that “this demonstrates the latent energy of Korean women who never
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largely operated top-down, the BSE controversy has been phrased by the protester as a
symbolic battle over the freedom of speech and democratic rights. But there can be no
question that this democratic battle operated in the name of South Korean citizens
mobilizing in the streets a defense against a microbial attack on Korea from the
outside, and thus drawing a line between South Korean patriots and those who
betray them.
Although the state has played an important role in the shaping of Korean
bionationalism, the emerging picture remains ambiguous: the “Hwang project”
was consistent with a large-scale political-industrial mobilization in biotechnology
and reproductive politics, which had been an important state project since the
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Notes
1. For the following sections see also Gottweis and Kim (2010).
2. There were four Hwang support groups before the PD Notebook broadcast in November, after
which 11 additional groups were established. For I Love Hwang Woo-Suk, the number of
members rose from 10,000 before the broadcast to a high of 110,000 after the broadcast.
3. According to Voice of a Nation, an online newspaper that supports Hwang Woo-Suk, as of
January 2008, 647,111 people signed the petition to allow Hwang to resume research; their
goal is a million signatures.
4. Koreans are very active in Internet-based participation and sharing. Of the respondents, 91.6%
have either participated in or shared, through one or more means, ranging from operation of a
forum (77.85), blog, or mini web page (52.4%) to writing comments (45.6%), to copying and
pasting (62.5%), or downloading of data, and to creating user-created content (UCC, a staple
of Web 2.0) (43.2%) (NIDA 2006).
5. Following a newspaper report, according to a Korean researcher, the sequence of prion protein
gene (PRNP) of 124 vCJD patients in the UK in 2004 all had Methionine-Methionine
homozygosity at codon 129. Normally, British have a 50% chance of Metionine-Valine
heterozygosity and a 10% chance of Valine-Valine homozygosity. Kim Young-Sun,
the director of the Korea CJD Diagnostic Center, investigated PRNP of 529 normal Koreans
without human BSE. According to Jeong et al. 2004, 94.33% of Koreans have Met-Met,
5.48% have Met-Val, and 0.19% have Val-Val (Jeong et al. 2004). The researchers analyzed
PRNP of 150 patients with sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease similar to vCJD, resulting in an
all Met-Met homozygosity at codon 129 as well (Jeong et al. 2005). Kim explained: “Only
40% of populations have Met-Met in US or UK. Therefore, it implies that Korean[s] have
higher possibility to get human vBSE compared to American and British” (DongA Ilbo 2007).
238 H. Gottweis and B. Kim
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