Super Genius DNA

“You’re going to see Congresswoman Yang Hye-Sook?” Park Dong-Hyun asked.

“Yeah.”

Young-Joon nodded.

Park Joo-Hyul scratched his head like something was strange.

“It won’t be hard to get the motion passed, and it won’t take long. You don’t have to meet the sponsor yourself.”

“It’s not like that. I just want to meet her again.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to her since I’m talking to her already.”

“No, I’ll contact her. It’s personal. It’ll be funny if you call and tell her that your CEO wants to meet her. I’m her student.”

“Oh, okay. Do you have her contact information?”

Yang Hye-Sook was one of the people Young-Joon was indebted to when he was in university.

About ten years ago, Young-Joon, who was a freshman biomedical engineering student at Jungyoon University, was living in poverty. He was always on edge due to his victim mentality and low self-esteem.

Half of the students who came to a prestigious university like Jungyoon University were from wealthy families. They were pampered with lots of love from their affluent families, received the best private education, and studied abroad. They were able to go shopping in department stores after lunch, swiping their credit cards like it was nothing.

Young-Joon felt inferior to them. There were many times when he would slip away from his friend group who were going to get lunch, saying he had something to do, to hide in a convenience store and eat instant noodles.

‘It was pretty hard back then.’

Young-Joon reminisced back to about a decade ago.

He worked two part-time jobs. Tuition and living expenses were awful, and just breathing cost him money. And the person who helped him then was Professor Yang Hye-Sook. It wasn’t just consolation or encouragement, but actual financial help.

* * *

“I was going to come see you before graduation, but your number changed, and the office wouldn’t tell me the new one. I also sent an email back then, but I thought you were busy since you didn’t respond,” Young-Joon said.

He was having dinner in a restaurant near Yang Hye-Sook’s studio apartment.

“I was probably just entering politics at the time, so I was too busy for anything. I had told the office multiple times to not give out my personal information as well,” Yang Hye-Sook said. “Because rumors could come up if I was still connected to the university.”

“I see. I completely forgot about contacting you after I went to graduate school because I was so busy, but now, I’m seeing you as a congresswoman. I was really surprised. You’re like a completely different person.”

“Haha, speak for yourself,” Yang Hye-Sook said. “A kid who had to work two part-time jobs and skip meals because he couldn’t pay tuition shows up as the owner of one of the largest companies in the world. You’ve succeeded so much I wouldn’t even recognize you.”

“Thank you.”

Young-Joon smiled.

“Why didn’t I just give you a loan instead of giving you chicken feed. Then, I would have made a lot of money, right?”

“Chicken feed? What do you mean? That money helped me out a lot,” Young-Joon said. “I was going to have to take a year off because I didn’t have the tuition, but I was so surprised when the department office told me that I was enrolled. I still remember that day vividly.”

“When I teach students, I can see the ones who have difficult circumstances,” Yang Hye-Sook. “You also came and talked to me.”

Young-Joon slowly nodded.

With Yang Hye-Sook’s help, he was able to continue his studies without taking a year off and later graduated with a scholarship.

“I wanted to join your lab when I graduated,” Young-Joon said.

After graduation, Yang Hye-Sook hired Young-Joon as a research student and let him study while giving him a salary that was slightly better than a part-time job. She was basically giving him money for living expenses.

“I did. If you had come to work for me, we would have taken over Pfizer or Conson & Colson by now.”

“Haha!”

“You couldn’t do it because you went to work for someone naive like Professor Ban Du-Il.”

“But Professor Ban Du-Il is a really great person. He helped me out a lot. There was someone from the lab next door… Who was it… Oh, Professor Park Hyung-Bum! I had some friction with one of his graduate students, and it turned into a fight with him.”

“You fought with Professor Park?”

Yang Hye-Sook was shocked.

“The situation was complicated. That graduate student had reserved the only ultracentrifuge in the building before me, but he didn’t take the sample out after using it and put a lock on the equipment. I obviously couldn’t touch it because it wasn’t mine, right?” Young-Joon said. “So I called his lab, and they said he wasn’t there. I asked where he was and it was crazy… I was so shocked that I still remember it. Do you know what he said?”

“What did they say?”

“He said that the student went to work as a valet because Professor Park’s daughter was getting married.”

“Hahaha!”

Yang Hye-Sook burst into laughter.

“No, it’s not funny. I was shocked when I first heard it. All of his students went to that wedding. They took pictures and clapped for them; they weren’t just guests, but they were working for the venue for free. They couldn’t refuse because their professor asked them to do it,” Young-Joon said. “This is why even people in the same industry talk crap about graduate school,” Yang Hye-Sook replied.

“They say that when people do wrong, they go to jail, but when university students do wrong, they go to graduate school.”

“Haha, yeah. Someone put that on the bulletin board in front of the school before.”

“The students were also dragged there all of a sudden, so they didn’t even remember to return the equipment, let alone anything else. I was in a hurry to finish my experiment, so I got annoyed and argued with the student that he should have still taken out the samples, but Professor Park came into the lab and asked what was going on…”

“So you argued with Professor Park as well?”

“Yes. It was huge. We were talking and then shouting… You know he has a temper, right? He was so angry that a greenhorn who was still doing his Master’s was talking back to him that he angrily screamed, calling me arrogant and stuff. He almost punched me in the face.”

“Considering your personality, you probably would have reported him if,”

“Probably. Anyway, people were trying to stop us, when Professor Ban came in and cleared things up. I thought he was going to punish me because I still yelled at a professor, but he didn’t say anything.”

“He defended you?”

“Yes. He firmly said that it was Professor Park’s fault and that I didn’t do anything wrong. I was so touched by that.”

Yang Hye-Sook smiled, then nodded.

“Professor Ban is a good person, and he’s by-the-book.”

“And Professor Park is insane. How could he call his own students, tell them to come to the ceremony, and make them work for the venue… The students there were always so tired that they walked around the lab like zombies.”

“Why don’t you try looking out for the human rights of those poor graduate students?” Yang Hye-Sook said, laughing.

“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do as a member of the National Assembly?” Young-Joon said.

“The laws are slow and dull, so there’s only so much it can do to catch professors who are ruling like kings in the little kingdom-like labs.”

“I see.”

“Even if the research foundation creates a law to pay students research funding as a stipend, there are some professors who take that away.”

“That’s extortion… Are there really people like that?”

“You just don’t know any, but there are quite a few. There are some professors who are so bad that they make Professor Park, who makes his students work as a parking attendant, like a saint. And I’m one of the people who decided to leave that.”

“... I should look into it. I don’t know about other schools, but I don’t want something like that happening in my alma mater and my juniors.”

“Good idea. I think someone in your position has an obligation to care about the students,” Yang Hye-Sook said. “You’re not just a businessman or scientist—you are this society’s leader and intellectual.”

“Ah, I’m not that big.”

“Anyways, enough about that. Young-Joon, does the research you’re doing this time reverse brain death?” Yang Hye-Sook asked.

“That’s what we’re aiming for.”

“Hm…”

Yang Hye-Sook cut a small piece of her steak and stared at Young-Joon while eating it.

“How much research have you done?” she asked.

“We’re working with Cellijenner, and Doctor Song Ji-Hyun is working on it aggressively. Professor Carpentier and our team members are incredibly talented, so we’re making a lot of progress,” Young-Joon replied. “We’ll probably be able to finish preclinical trials within a few weeks. Then, we’ll move on to clinical trials in brain-dead patients.”

“I’m pushing for an amendment to the bill as the primary sponsor,” Yang Hye-Sook said. “But even if this amendment passes, you won’t be able to conduct clinical trials on brain-dead people right away.”

“There is a brain-dead man named Kim Hyun-Taek. He’s been on life support for six months now, and we have his family’s consent.”

“They agreed because of your reputation,” Yang Hye-Sook pointed out.

“Pardon?”

“But the fundamental rule of clinical trials is informed consent of the patient. You know that, right?”

“...”

The principle of clinical trials was that the patients themselves must give their consent. If a patient was too cognitively impaired to understand and give consent, a proxy could give consent on their behalf. However, they still had to make sure that the subject understood as much information as much as their cognitive abilities allowed them to. And, if possible, they had the patient’s signature and date in their own handwriting.

“But isn’t the consent of the guardian enough to allow a patient in a persistent vegetative state to participate in a clinical trial?”

“Not quite. The types of clinical trials aimed at improving PVS (Persistent Vegetative State) are limited, and they are protected under the Clinical Trials Act as a living person. However, because brain-dead people are dead people under current law, we have to take into account the possibility that some scientists will use their freshly dead bodies to perform various cell biology experiments they want, potentially compromising their dignity.”

“Wait, what is… You’re saying that the patient’s consent must be strictly obtained because it’s a clinical trial, but the Clinical Trials Act doesn’t apply because they’re dead?”

No. You still have to be strict about informed consent when dealing with a person who is living under the Clinical Trials Act, but the laws become stricter about informed consent when dealing with a dead person who is not protected by the Clinical Trials Act.”

“I don’t understand, If we’re treating them as a dead person, it means that they lack life rather than ambiguous dignity. But you’re saying that the law is stricter on that?”

“A human being who has just died has very high legal importance.”

“Why?”

“Because inheritance laws are triggered at the point of death,” Yang Hye-Sook said.