“Your problem is that your face reveals everything when you are lying”: making and remaking of conduct in South Korean life sciences

Abstract

In the emerging context of the knowledge economy, exploring how both the global economic environment and national context influence local research practices is of crucial importance. The Hwang scandal in South Korea illustrates a typical research practice geared towards the exploitation of labor and human resources in response to, and as part of, global competition in the life sciences. This article argues that the ongoing exploitation of young talent and labor in the Korean academic community, even after the scandal, represents the combined outcome of actors' interests, organizational power structures, and strategies of survival in a global knowledge system that constrains the conductivity of actors. Competition and exploitation are internalized in the self-governance of the life sciences, despite avowed commitments to more rational and democratic research practices at the institutional level.