The government says its financial support for local stem cell research will exceed one-hundred- billion won or some 86 million U.S. dollars in less than 10 years.

The Ministry of Science and Technology announced the plan Sunday followed the latest scientific breakthrough by a Seoul National University research team which succeeded in creating human embryos through cloning and extracting embryonic stem cells.

More than 16 billion won has already been provided to the Stem Cell Research Center, which was established under the science ministry in July 2002, and an amount of one-hundred-52 billion won in financial support will be provided by 2012.