Bioethics has become a political issue in promoting biotechnology around the world. Korea was the fifth country in the world to have cloned animals. Twelve attempts were made to legislate bioethics issues from 1997 to March 2003. To the present, there are no existing governmental laws that ban human cloning. All bills proposed on this subject are under consideration. We will analyze the conduct of the Korean legislative process regarding bioethics issues proposed by Korean government ministries and the National Assembly, (...) particularly concerning cloning technologies. Experience in Korea will provide some lessons, especially for developing countries. (shrink)

The possibility of creating human embryonic stem cell lines from the inner cell mass of blastocysts has led to considerable debate about how these scientific developments should be regulated. Part of this debate has focused on the ethical analysis and part on how this analysis should influence policymaking.

On May 18, 2001, the Korean Bioethics Advisory Commission, sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology, published a set of recommendations for biotechnological research and application, including scientific experiments with human embryos. Four days later, the KBAC held a public hearing to finalize its recommendations. Since then, public reaction and debate over the ethical aspects of human embryo research have actively surfaced. Most leaders of religious organizations, especially Catholic churches, objected to any type of embryo research. On the other (...) hand, some leaders of the scientific community supported freer scientific research on human embryos. (shrink)