Correcting Life through the Marketplace? The History of Genome Editing and Academic Capitalism in South Korea

This paper examines a scientific career of one of the most prominent genetic engineering scientists in South Korea, Dr. Jin-soo Kim. As he often introduces himself, he is “an entrepreneur and chemist-turned-biologist.” He is quite renowned for his work on genome editing at Seoul National University, and for his founding of ToolGen, one of the largest gene editing companies in South Korea. I will follow his career within the context of the rise of academic capitalism in South Korea. I will first examine his early career from a research scientist at a private research institute to a founder of a biotech company within the context of the rise of the venture capital industry in South Korea. The Korean government, faced with an economic crisis, tried to promote venture business to restructure the Korean industry. Then I will analyze his return to an academic post at Seoul National University in the early 2000s, at a time when the university tried to institutionalize academic capitalism. In many ways, his return came to be regarded as an attempt to correct academic life toward economic development. By 2014, he has emerged as one of the most prominent entrepreneurial scientists at Seoul National University, directing cutting-edge research teams both at the Institute for Basic Science and ToolGen. By reflecting on his boundary crossing between the academy and industry, this paper ends with a brief discussion on a recent controversy over the ownership of the CRISPR patents development at Seoul National University.