Oxygen can be doped into a gallium nitride crystal by preparing a non-C-plane gallium nitride seed crystal, supplying material gases including gallium, nitrogen and oxygen to the non-C-plane gallium nitride seed crystal, growing a non-C-plane gallium nitride crystal on the non-C-plane gallium nitride seed crystal and allowing oxygen to infiltrate via a non-C-plane surface to the growing gallium nitride crystal. Otherwise, oxygen can be doped into a gallium nitride crystal by preparing a C-plane gallium nitride seed crystal or a three-rotationally symmetric plane foreign material seed crystal, supplying material gases including gallium, nitrogen and oxygen to the C-plane gallium nitride seed crystal or the three-rotationally symmetric foreign seed crystal, growing a faceted C-plane gallium nitride crystal having facets of non-C-planes on the seed crystal, maintaining the facets on the C-plane gallium nitride crystal and allowing oxygen to infiltrate via the non-C-plane facets to the gallium nitride crystal.