Hwang Woo-suk expected to become a professor of Seoul National University (SNU) in 1982 at the age of 29 after obtaining his Ph.D. in veterinary medicine a year earlier. But Hwang's mentor, who made the promise to promote him to the professorship, died after a heart attack in 1981 and Hwang's hopes of promotion were smashed. Instead Hwang's rival joined the faculty. Hwang was even urged to vacate his lab and the university canceled all lectures allocated for him before delivering an ultimatum, asking Hwang to leave the school. "I became a victim of a chronic rivalry between academic factions in our college and I watched a competitor with fewer achievements than me beat me and joined the faculty. I was shocked and was at a loss as to how to get through the situation," he recalled in his biography. The promising veterinarian lost his job overnight and had to work as a part-time lecturer in other universities over the next three years as he was also the main breadwinner of his family. Hwang had married in 1979 and by this time, in 1982, he had two sons -- a threeyear- old and one-year-old. Despite such hardship, however, Hwang never forgot his lifelong goal of developing healthy, virulent cows, which he believed would make poor farmers better off. He sold his only asset of a 16-pyong apartment (some 52.8 square meters) and established a farm and bought cows to study artificial insemination. "Back then, nobody believed my attempt would bear fruit. But they were wrong because the farm is helpful even now as one of our experiment sites," Hwang said. Opportunity knocked on the door in the mid-1980s from the SNU itself, only a few years after the university had expelled him. Cloning and Buddhism Halfway through 1985, Cheong Changkook, then dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at SNU, asked Hwang whether he wanted to study in Japan and Hwang accepted the offer. "Cheong appeared to feel sorry for having failed me in regard to the professorship appointment in 1982 and I gladly took up the proposal since I hoped to learn about advanced biotechnologies," the 52-year-old said. Hwang crossed the East Sea to Hokkaido University, which was the world's leading competitor in artificial fertilization, in 1985 and recognized cloning would be mainstream in biotechnology. "In Japan, I met world-renowned professors in cloning and young prodigies who were years ahead of me in every aspect," Hwang said. "That made my competitive juices flow and I started going all-out to nudge past them." Hwang is very athletic and enjoyed playing golf before leaving for Japan. But when he arrived there, he decided not to play the time-consuming sport any more to focus fully on his research. "I played golf with Hwang several times before he left for Japan and he was good at the sports, sometimes shooting about 10-over at around 82," Cheong said. "But after he returned home, I could not play golf with him." The yearlong stint in Japan affected Hwang's future greatly and he learned that his failure in the 1982 faculty appointment was a blessing in disguise. "If I had been promoted to the position of professor in 1982, I might have been content with the early success and would have lived like a 'frog in a well,' not knowing anything about the ocean," Hwang noted. He returned home in 1986 and finally became a SNU professor in 1987 and things all seemed to get on the right track but then health problems emerged. In fact, he was on the brink of death in 1987 when he had to go through two operations over 10 days, which took more than eight hours apiece, due to a liver disease. "From the surgery I experienced the shadow of the death. My whole body was dotted with frightful after-operation scars," Hwang said. Hwang was too tired both physically and mentally at the age of 35 to believe he would become a stem cell superstar in the future. Then he turned to religion to alleviate his strain. On an autumn day in 1987, Hwang visited Chondung Temple in Kwanghwa Island off Inchon and it was here he found in Buddhism a source for regaining his strength. "When I saw a statue of the Buddha in the temple, I wanted to bow to him. So I did and found myself refreshed. Then I thought maybe I could start experiments again," Hwang recollected. Hwang, a former Catholic, could overcome his crisis on the strength of his newfound religion Buddhism. At the time, Hwang promised himself that he would visit the temple at least once a month and has kept his word over the following two decades. Just like ordinary Korean Buddhists, he has paid a special visits to the temple on special occasions as he did in the early morning of May 14 this year, the day Hwang left for the United States and Britain to announce the establishment of the customized stem cells. "Hwang came here without prior notice in around 3 a.m. on May 14 and bowed 108 times in a the ritual aimed at expelling all human agonies, in front of a statute," said Rev. Chonghak, vice head of Chondung-sa Temple. He also traveled to the temple in Feb. 2004 when wide-ranging ethical disputes plagued him after he made the headlines with his stem cell researches through cloned embryos. Veterinary Pedigrees Hwang got back to his old self, wanting to breed a disease-resistant cow that could give hope to many poverty-stricken Korean farmers, and started working around the clock. Starting late 1987, his notorious timetable began of carrying out research 17-18 hours a day with only four-hours sleep, seven days a week without letup. He made it a habit of rising at 4:30 a.m., and after a soak in a traditional bathhouse near his home he would meditate for 40 minutes. He could not spend much time with his wife and two sons, who are now studying in the U.S., for his love for his work, but after years of such intensive researches, he has started building up an impressive roster of accomplishments. In 1993, he made a stir by creating Korea's first cow using in vitro fertilization and six years later he cloned a pair of cows for the first time in Korea and for the fifth time in the world. Chung Kyung-tack, an official of the science-technology ministry who was in charge of supporting Hwang's cloning in the late 1990s, recalls Hwang was a hardcore workaholic. "One cold winter day, I accompanied Hwang to a farm to see his research. As soon as Hwang arrived, wearing an operation gown and boots, he inserted his hand into a cow without a moment's hesitation. He was like a machine," Chung said. Hwang continued to find success with animal cloning as he cloned pigs in 2002 and in December 2004 his team surprised the world by unveiling four calves that Hwang claimed to be resistant to mad cow disease. One of the four genetically engineered calves was sent to Japan early this month for an in vivo challenge test that is designed to see if the calf is free of mad cow disease in a real-life environment. Hwang's team, composed of 100-plus top researchers, also has created dozens of pigs embedded with human immunity genes, which will prevent immune responses when pig organs were transplanted into human, since last year. The team plans to start to transplant their organs or cells into monkeys as early as late this year to check the possibility of transplanting organs of other species into human bodies. The series of cloning successes with animals were, however, just a signal of what was in store in his future. He became the stem cell king of the world just three years after he jumped into the field with government funds in 2001. Interestingly enough, the nation's telecom industry contributed to the start of Hwang's human cloning research because the funding came from this lucrative business.