SEOUL, Jan. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on Monday accepted the resignation of a senior aide on science and technology who offered to step down for a scandal involving the country's leading stem cell scientist.

    Park Ky-young, senior advisor on information, science and technology for Roh, offered to resign two weeks ago over the authenticity scandal surrounding the clone pioneer Hwang Woo-suk's2004 research paper published in the U.S. journal Science.

    "President Roh decided to accept the resignation offer after concluding that Park would be unable to continue to do her job," Roh's spokesman Kim Man-soo said.

    Park, one of the 25 co-authors of Hwang's 2004 paper, has come under public pressure to accept moral responsibility for the scandal after a Seoul National University panel announced earlier this month that Hwang fabricated important data in the paper.

    Local scientists and media widely cast doubt on Park's role in the paper, suspecting Hwang gave her the co-author title out of consideration for political reason.

    Park once was biology professor of Sunchon National University in South Jeolla Province of South Korea. In January 2004, she was promoted to the post as senior advisor on information, science and technology for Roh.

    In the paper published in February 2004 by Science, Hwang's team claimed it successfully cloned human embryo and extracted a stem cell line from it for the first time in the world.

    Hwang's team claimed in the paper published by Science in May 2005 that it successfully produced 11 patient-tailored stem cell lines. The development cited in the paper was widely viewed as an important progress in the therapeutic cloning research.

    Because of the two papers, Hwang became the top-ranking stem cell scientist in the world and won huge fame in South Korea.

    However, after investigation, the special panel of Seoul National University confirmed Hwang's team faked the results of the two papers. Enditem