[tkiley]

I don't trust the secondhand reporting and translation work here. I have seen several korean articles which claimed that Dr. Hyun-Tak Kim disavowed both papers. This would be very significant, as he is the coauthor with the h index! However, in the korean articles where this claim has a cited source, the source is his new scientist interview, in which he disavowed only the first paper (the one with 3 authors, including Kwon and excluding Hyun-Tak Kim):

https://archive.is/DhijM

I have not seen any credible direct quotes which show that any of the authors have distanced themselves from the second paper (the one with 6 authors including Hyun-Tak Kim).

My tentative read is that every author besides Kwon is likely thinking "this is not ready / not real, but if I pump the brakes on the hype train, Kwon will get all the credit in the unlikely event that it replicates quickly, so it's best to stay tight-lipped for the moment."

[DoctorOetker]

That is quite an analogy with bad sex, someone suffers premature publication, and then its too embarrassing for the others involved to make a comment if anyone came...