SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 28 - Days after his televised fall from grace, Hwang Woo Suk, South Korea's cloning pioneer, re-emerged Monday as a national hero as the country rallied around him in an outpouring of nationalism and sympathy for the goals of his stem cell research.
"As a mother, I see the world differently," Hong Na Kyung, 31, a consultant, said when asked why she had signed up to donate her eggs for his laboratory research. "I want to see a better world and a better Korea for my children, and I think Dr. Hwang can help."
Ms. Hong was one of 760 South Korean women who have registered in the last week to donate eggs. The list included an entire high school class of 33 girls. A nonprofit egg donor foundation was started last week after Dr. Hwang admitted to covering up the fact that in 2002 and 2003, during an a shortage of human eggs for research purposes, two of his junior researchers donated their own eggs, and that about 20 other women had also been paid for donating eggs.
Those ethical violations came out two weeks ago when Gerald Schatten, a prominent researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, abruptly ended a 20-month collaboration with Dr. Hwang and released a statement questioning the circumstances under which the eggs had been obtained.
Many South Koreans say Dr. Schatten's criticisms were a useful catalyst for bringing stem cell research here into line with international ethical norms. But some see it as the latest case of the United States' bullying of South Korea.
"Professor Hwang! Cheer up! The people will look after you," implores one fan Web site here. "We have to open our eyes wide and protect Dr. Hwang from shrewd American doctors."
On the site, a field of rose of Sharon, South Korea's national flower, gives a backdrop to a photograph of Dr. Hwang holding Snuppy, the Afghan hound he cloned earlier this year. On another page, a photo of Dr. Schatten is shown discarded in a swamp.
No other foreign researchers are known to have broken off ties with Dr. Hwang, a world leader in the field.
He rose to national fame in 1999 when he created a cloned cow. In 2004, he stunned the world by announcing that he had cloned a human embryo and harvested stem cells from it. In May, he announced that he had cloned stem cells that were genetic matches of patients' cells. In August, he introduced Snuppy to the world.
"We are not scaling back nor slowing down in any way," Donald F. Smith, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, said Sunday evening. He is a frequent visitor to the laboratory here, where two Cornell scientists are working on cloning issues involving horses and cows.
"What he will probably do," Mr. Smith said, "is get back to work using stem cells derived from donors where everything is completely above the board and squeaky clean, and rebuild his credibility in his field. I don't think the scientific issues are in question. It is the ethical issues."
Since a registry started on Nov. 1, 22,000 disabled or ill people have signed up for stem cell treatment with the World Stem Cell Hub, a research clearinghouse that Dr. Hwang headed until the egg scandal forced him to step down. Scientists hope that by cloning human embryos and creating stem cell lines, they can create tissue that could repair damaged spinal cords or reverse Alzheimer's disease.
Kang Shin Ik, vice president of the Korean Bioethics Association, said Monday in an interview that an all-South-Korean panel should be established to ensure that the country's research meets international ethical guidelines. "If you invite more foreigners into the process here, you will have a more angry public opinion," he said.
Public anger spiked after a weekly television investigative documentary program, "PD Notebook," last week exposed shortcuts taken to obtain the human eggs. Within days of the broadcast, 11 of the program's 12 sponsors pulled their advertising, the MBC television network said.
Two Seoul newspapers reported that angry viewers had posted photos of family members of the show's producers on the Internet, threatening to kill them.
To many, the backlash reflects a growing tendency in the country to invoke nationalistic sentiments to resist outside scrutiny. On Saturday, President Roh Moo Hyun posted a statement on his Web site saying that "the public's response went too far."
But hours after his message, about 50 people started a candlelight vigil in front of the MBC studios.
"I want to stand up and walk again," Kang Won Rae, a pop singer who has been in a wheelchair since a car accident. "Dr. Hwang is the biggest hope for us disabled people."
He said Dr. Hwang "is being victimized excessively for his minor ethical breaches in the past."
Some critical voices have been heard, often on the left, saying South Korea had invited problems by encouraging Dr. Hwang's headlong dash into stem cell research while hardly taking note of the ethical debates over the research in countries like the United States.
"The campaign to collect eggs is grotesque and bizarre," said Cho Yi Yeo Wool, editor of a feminist women's magazine here, during a seminar presented Monday by the splinter Democratic Labor Party, which espouses strict ethical regulations. "Is a human egg some kind of gold trinket or mineral that you can dig out from a mountainside?"
Roman Catholic churches in South Korea have also criticized Dr. Hwang's work and are financing rival stem cell research based on umbilical cord blood, which does not involve the destroying of human embryos, as Dr. Hwang's work does.
The government has promised to continue financing his research, though. On Monday at the lab, two researchers said they expected their leader to return to work soon.
"He is a fatherlike figure to us," said Lee Byong Chon, the No. 2 scientist at Dr. Hwang's lab. "This is a fresh start for us to continue to work and make our work completely up to global standards. We have a strong pride in our work. We know that what we do is elevating the brand value of our country."
