Journalists have revealed that nine scientists in Japan co-authored journal articles with North Korean researchers in recent years, possibly violating U.N. sanctions that bar scientific cooperation with the isolated country.
But those apparent joint efforts, on eight papers, came as a surprise to both the Japanese scientists and their institutions. “I had no idea” of the co-authorship on one paper, a Nagoya University researcher told Japan’s Nikkei media group, which reported the finding last month. The scholar told Nikkei his name had been used without permission by a colleague based in China.
Other Japanese academics also said they were unaware North Korean researchers were part of collaborations with third-country scientists until the papers were published. That was the case for two papers co-authored by researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. Those Japanese scholars decided to add an erratum to the papers denying any connection to the North Korean scientists, according to Nikkei. Researchers at the University of Tokyo; Hokkaido University; and RIKEN, the network of national research institutes, also found themselves listed as co-authors with North Korean scientists.
In another example, a researcher with RIKEN provided a protein structure analysis tool to a scientist in a third country. That scientist was later lead author on a paper that included North Korean authors and also listed the RIKEN researcher as a co-author. But in a statement to Science, RIKEN said it “confirmed that the researcher at RIKEN has not had any collaborative relationship with North Korean researchers.”
Nikkei reporters discovered the questionable publications by searching through 97 million papers published since 2016 listed in the Scopus database. That year the United Nations Security Council suspended scientific and technical cooperation with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, except for medical exchanges, after the nation successfully detonated a nuclear warhead. It is unclear whether the Japanese researchers will face any repercussions.
