benoit schillings

The papers were not ready for publication. Lee & Kim had been working on the material on and off since Kim was in graduate school in 1999 (LK-99 geddit?). Lee never makes tenure and is still stuck as an adjunct professor 19 years later. Kim goes off to work in battery materials for a decade plus. 2018 - they get funding from industry for another go at it. But it comes with strings attached, YH Kwon, an LG Display affiliated university professor is parachuted in to babysit these 2 not very pedigreed autists. Lee becomes CEO, Kwon CTO and Kim the Research Director as he’s youngest. They immediately isolate the material, but it takes them three years to figure out a production process, which they nail in 2021. As they start writing papers they realize that they’re going to need a Western co-author to navigate the space. They bring on board HyunTak, a well know Korean/American physical chemist from the College of William and Mary. Patent filing takes place in 2022 and March 2023. Kim starts to get nervous that they’ll get scooped. The Ranga Dias retraction news breaks. The process is too simple. Someone will leak it. China will steal it. There are spies everywhere. Meanwhile HyunTak insists more work on characterization is needed before publishing. It’s Saturday 22 July 5pm in Korea. YH Kwon logs on to arxiv and pushes a paper from the Korea team. It lists Lee Kim and Kwon as the third author. No one else is listed. A Nobel can be shared by 3 people. 2.30 am in Virginia HyunTak gets a ping from his Korean contact. He rushes out his paper, by 6am that morning. It lists Lee, Kim and himself as the third author, along with 3 others, conspicuously leaving YH Kwon out of the picture. The cat is out of the bag now.