Challenging bosses is uncommon and failing to bow to superiors invites reproach. With most men forced to serve a stint in the military, a culture of following orders prevails.

Nowhere is this more evident than in academia, a field that has been roiled by the fraud scandal surrounding the once esteemed stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk. Blindly obeying lordly professors is seen as the surest way to success. Graduate students compete for coveted tenured faculty positions known here as an "iron rice bowl" -- a Chinese idiom meaning a guaranteed lifetime job.

"In relations with professors, the graduate school students are the absolute weak," said Baek Seung-ki, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in physics at state-run Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. "You must do whatever you are told to do."

But some are now questioning this system, including a few in academia and a newspaper that editorialized against the university culture.



Hwang, 53, rose to international fame in 2004 when he announced the creation of the world's first cloned human embryo at his laboratory at Seoul National University, South Korea's most prestigious school.

Last year, he claimed to have created embryonic stem cells tailor-made to patients, which stunned the world and suggested fast progress toward developing treatments for Alzheimer's disease, paralysis and other afflictions.

Kim Sun-jong, a former researcher at Hwang's lab, has told South Korean media that Hwang ordered him to fabricate data for a paper on the designer stem cells published in the journal Science in May.

Hwang said last month he would quit his professorship amid a university investigation. Seoul National University says it has yet to receive any letter of resignation, meaning he is still employed by the state-run institution.



The university has confirmed all the research in the 2005 paper was faked. It plans to release final results of its probe Tuesday, including the veracity of the 2004 embryo report as well as whether Hwang actually cloned the world's first dog, as claimed last year.

The problem, editorialized the Segye Times newspaper, is "an outdated, premodern lab culture of obeying seniors' orders. While it was Professor Hwang who should have ensured truth and conscience, it is lamentable the researchers couldn't restrain such misconduct and instead blindly followed the orders."

Some experts say Hwang's underlings had no real choice.

"Professor Hwang's researchers followed the only logic of survival available to them ... even if it meant faking the research results," said Vladimir Tikhonov, a professor of Korean studies at the University of Oslo. "Questioning your professor means full loss" of job opportunities, he said.



MBC television network, which has played the leading media role in uncovering the cloning scandal, reported Tuesday that one of the two researchers at Hwang's Seoul lab who donated eggs for research, was pressured to do so for fear Hwang would not list her as a co-author for a paper.

Hwang admitted in November the scientists donated eggs -- widely considered unethical. He says he didn't know about the donations until later.

"I regret that I didn't stand up against the professor," MBC quoted the graduate student researcher, identified by her surname Park, as saying in an e-mail message to an acquaintance before donating eggs in 2003. Park said she was "exceedingly disgusted" with herself for having to conduct cloning experiments on her own eggs.



Influential professors at prestigious schools "are allowed to build their own private kingdoms, promoting and demoting their underlings largely at will," said Tikhonov, a naturalized Korean of Russian origin also known as Pak Noja.

Listing professors as senior authors on papers even if they contributed little, fabricating receipts to cover up their personal use of research funds, and running errands for them are just a few of the headaches grad school students say they face.

"Most professors tend to think graduate students are their personal secretaries," said a doctoral degree candidate at Seoul's Hanyang University, requesting that his name and even his major not be revealed.

"It's hard to refuse requests in fear of retaliation," said the 34-year-old, who once had to go to his professor's house on a weekend to fix a computer.



Professors argue such misconduct is uncommon.

"I think it's just a small number of professors who make such absurd requests," said Cho Dong-jun, who teaches international relations at the University of Seoul. "If these were common practices, I, as a professor, would have easily known about them, but I've never seen such a case."

Cutthroat competition for a professorship sometimes involves large sums of money changing hands.

In the first eight months of last year, prosecutors penalized 61 professors and administrators, mostly for receiving bribes in exchange for granting tenure. In 2004, prosecutors punished 23 professors and officials on similar charges as well as misappropriation of funds.

In one case last year, a university chancellor received $4 million from 42 candidates in exchange for appointing them as professors, prosecutors said.