HWANG Sung Yeon, sitting in a packed coffee shop on the campus of his university, cuts an easy figure on a humid Seoul day. The Ph.D. student from the Center for RNA Research sips on an iced coffee and talks easily about his choice of movie, the 1950's thriller/ horror classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. "Initially, I chose the movie because I love classics and it takes place at a particularly tense time in history - during the Cold War between the US and the USSR. I think the movie accurately reflects the feeling and tense mood of that time."

▲ Bennell and Jack Belicee examine a duplicate and formulate a plan of resistance

Based in the fictional American town of Santa Mira, the movie captures the escapades of Dr. Miles Bennell who, after returning home to his practice, finds several of his patients suffering the same paranoid delusion: They believe their loved ones are not quite what they seem and are really impostors. The town's sole doctor is initially skeptical, but eventually persuaded by his friends, and love interest, Becky Driscoll, that something sinister is occurring. After receiving a frantic phone call from a friend, Bennell discovers everyone in the town is being replaced by a duplicate, another life form that emerges from a pod and assumes a human's identity. The doctor, pitted against these so-called 'pod people', attempts to escape town and sound the alarm of the impending alien invasion. "There are a few versions of the same story," says Sung Yeon, from the shaded veranda of the coffee shop. "But I prefer the original because it's the purest interpretation, and brilliantly conveys the paranoia of the time; there was a witch hunt in America to root out communist sympathizers. I like how that period is portrayed on screen, everyone questions everyone to find out who is the 'outsider' – who is yet to be duplicated."

▲ Bennell and Becky pretending to be emotionless pod people to skip town

▲ Becky 'awakens' as a pod person

Sung Yeon's scientific mind also enjoyed the similarities between the plot and the mechanics of the immune system, "The manner in which the humans in the movie react to an outside threat is similar to how our immune system works in our body, there's a direct link for me. The 'pod' people are like the antigen and the remaining humans – Bennell and Becky – the immune system." The major function of the immune system, Sung Yeon explains, is to distinguish 'self' from 'non-self'. In the movie the duplicated humans, or 'pod people' set up a strategy to evade detection from humans and vice versa. "How Bennell and Becky try to avoid the pods by pretending to be devoid of emotion is tied into the workings of our immune system. A foreign threat will try to evade identification. A cell infected with a virus inside a person will try to confuse the immune system in order to survive and it becomes harder to distinguish self from non self. The infected cells try hard to fool the immune system. Same with the pod people, they confuse the humans around them to try and survive."

▲ Duplicates readying pods in the town square for a nationwide invasion

Survival, an integral theme of the movie, is directly related to Sung Yeon's research. "I study viruses and their evolution. How they set up a strategy to fool the immune system of the host body in order to survive, thrive and take over that body. It's really fascinating. Our bodies have evolved in a dynamic fashion, we interact with viruses and this aids evolution. When stronger people survive an attack from a virus their offspring are stronger and this helps aid human evolution, the mutation of the species, in order for us to survive. That's what I want to do and what I am currently doing – trying to better understand this cycle, this evolution of the history of viruses and the immune system."

▲ Sung Yeon poised in his natural habitat

The movie runs in at just under an hour and a half and, although some parts are farcical, Sung Yeon believes the movie – specifically the theme of an outside threat - stands the test of time. "I liked the scene where Bennell and Becky are caught in the town filled with pod people and pretend to be one of them by simply walking around emotionless and it works; well until Becky cries out when a dog is almost run over by a van, her emotional reaction gives them away. I liked how they reversed the strategy of the pod people. The ending is ambiguous but I think, maybe, the aliens prevail and conquered the Earth!"