Hwang Woo-suk, the South Korean cloning king, may be in disgrace in the eyes of the scientific world but he remains a hero in his own country. When Prof Hwang resigned from his official positions and apologised tearfully to the nation on Thursday for having concealed the fact that two of his laboratory staff donated their own eggs for his human cloning research, many Koreans felt that he was a victim of western - as opposed to Asian - ethical values. To some extent they were correct.

Scientific ethics are becoming increasingly global - and South Korea cannot present itself as a world-class location for bioscience business and research, as the government would like, unless it adheres to certain minimum standards of conduct backed up by a strong regulatory framework.