Cloning allegations put spotlight on S. Korea's competitive culture

SEOUL -- Six-day work weeks from morning until night. Companies trumpeting bigger and bigger flat-screen TVs. A government that proclaims it wants to be a ''hub" for everything from finance to robots. South Korea is fiercely committed to being No. 1, and doing it yesterday.

As South Korea's top scientist Hwang Woo-suk falls from his lofty perch amid a wave of allegations questioning his research, the country's competitive culture of always hurrying -- coupled with a healthy sense of national pride and craving for international recognition -- could be partly to blame.

''The Hwang Woo-suk case is a good example that in Korean society there still exists remnants of the past experience of fast growth," said Park Gil-sung, a sociology professor at Korea University. ''It's a problem of our social system that desires fast results."

Emerging from relative obscurity to reveal the world's first cloned human embryo in 2004, Hwang racked up a series of amazing achievements. He claimed this year to have cloned stem cells matched to patients with never-before-seen efficiency, and also created the first-ever cloned dog.

The Foreign Ministry assigned a diplomat to assist him with international contacts. Korean Air even gave Hwang and his wife free first-class flights for a decade.

After Hwang admitted ethics lapses last month by accepting eggs from female workers at his lab, the scientist's supporters still stood by him and hundreds of women offered to give their eggs.

But Hwang last week acknowledged ''fatal errors" in his work, and requested the high-profile journal Science withdraw a May article about his research. Today, Seoul National University said Hwang had been involved in a deliberate deception to fake DNA test results, and that it was now investigating all his work.

''I suspect it's a question of whether nationalism and the public spotlight kind of swept them along a little bit," said Michael Breen, author of ''The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies."

''In that kind of rush to be first, they kind of cut corners," he said.

The high-speed culture is such a feature of South Korean society that it's a commonly used catch-phrase: ''ppalli ppalli," meaning ''hurry hurry."

It's symbolized in everything from the hellish traffic in Seoul and Mad Max-esque bus drivers, to South Koreans' love of quick-hit coffee and energy drinks and downing shots of alcohol in a single gulp. A government campaign seems to have stemmed citizens' penchant to crowd in front of subway cars and not let exiting passengers leave.

The dynamic culture has its upside, helping South Koreans build their country from the ruins of the Korean War into the world's 11th largest economy. Companies like Samsung Electronics are leaders in production of memory chips, flat-screen displays, and mobile phones. And such corporate achievements are feted in local media as a source of pride for all.

South Koreans didn't ''get to where they are today without hustling," said Mike Weisbart, a columnist at The Korea Times. That speed will also help the country quickly recover and keep up its development no matter the results of the Hwang scandal, he said.

But there have been downsides, too -- sometimes with deadly effect.

In 1995, a Seoul department store collapsed, killing 501 people, in an accident blamed on faulty construction because of illegal design changes made after bribes to officials -- payments referred to as ''hurry-up" money. A bridge also collapsed in the city in 1994 for similar reasons, killing 32.