South Korean officials say the journal Science is avoiding articles by Korean scientists because of disgraced cloning researcher Hwang Woo-suk.

The journal printed just two articles by South Korean scientists last year and both were submitted before the Hwang scandal erupted in December 2005, The Korea Times reported.

Hwang's claims to have created patient-specific stem cells in an article in Science in May 2005 were found to have been a hoax.

The newspaper said the number of papers involving Korean scientists in two other top journals -- Nature and Cell -- also fell last year.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International