Chapter 223
Chapter 223: Chapter 217
Hyunwoo expected the comment would invite lots of stories from foreign fans of Tuti & Angelica. Some of them would send stories out of their wish to publicize the great men of their country and their history, and others would send stories for the copyright fees.
Thinking of such a reaction in the coming days, he smiled in satisfaction.
Several days later a middle-aged man followed Kyungsu into the office of Ani & Funny. Though his staff didn’t know him, Hyunwoo already met him before.
Hyunwoo held out his hand first.
“Welcome! As you came back after experiencing hard times, I hope you can have many good things.”
“Thanks for hiring me,” said James Lee, who returned from America. Bowing to Hyunwoo, he held his hands.
Hyunwoo introduced him to his staff. Though he failed in business, he was widely recognized for his excellent skills in making storyboards.
Scratching his head, James said, “James Lee is my American name, and my original Korean name is Dongbang Lee. You can call me either one, which ever you think is convenient to call.”
Hyunwoo gave him the position of overseeing the marketing team. In that respect, his American name fit his position very well.
Of course, James had no team members despite his position. In fact, the full-time staff of Ani & Funn had the title ‘manager’ without any exception.
“I have great expectations of your role here,” said Hyunwoo.
Hyunwoo wanted to take his hands off the chores of Any & Funny as much as possible. It was his wish that he came to the office three or four times a week, get a brief briefing on the status of the pending business and leave office within a couple of hours.
In order to realize his wish, Hyunwoo needed someone who could sub for him.
He initially expected such a role of Kyungsu and Sanggyu, but they failed to meet Hyunwoo’s expectations.
But Jame Lee would be different. Though he failed in business, he had experiences as the owner of his business.
With a lighthearted mind, Hyunwoo came out of the office.
He didn’t worry about KOVE DREAM and N&C Korea. Unless Jaegyong, Songjung, and Juhwan ran into big trouble, these companies would run very well even for a year without Hyunwoo.
In particular, Songjung was pretty dependable in his mind. When he delegated his power to her, including the hiring decision, she hired good people when the need arose.
Thanks to her hiring, the staff of KOVE DREAM already increased to ten. Except for Yenam and Hwasik, she was responsible for hiring the other eight staff members.
That’s why Hyunwoo came to have a big expectation of James Lee. If James could carry out his role as Hyunwoo expected, he could focus more on Haenim School.
In fact, that was his biggest wish these days.
Hyunwoo visited the school whenever he had free time.
The purpose of his visit was not to manage the school. There was only one thing he was involved in when he visited the school. It was to analyze Taeho’s failure notes.
Today, he headed to the school after coming out of the Ani & Funny office. Then, he held Taeho’s failure diaries.
He already analyzed more than ten failure diaries.
Among them, only one constantly kept coming to his mind. It was the first failure diary that he read on the first day when he moved Taeho’s research material to Haenim School.
When he was reading Taeho’s other failure diaries, he couldn’t concentrate because of that first one.
It recorded Taeho’s failed experiment on organic solar cells.
An organic solar cell is formed of a metal electrode, a photoactive layer, an insertion layer, a transparent electrode, and a substrate.
The most important material among these is the transparent electrode. Currently, ITO is used as an indium oxide electrode as a material. Indium is a rare mineral, and as it is on the verge of exhaustion, it is very expensive.
Therefore, the key to researching organic solar cells is to develop transparent electrode materials to replace indium oxide. Currently, various materials such as carbon nanotubes, metal mesh, graphene, and nanowires have been developed.
The first experimental note was a transparent electrode development experiment using carbon nanotubes. The biggest disadvantage of carbon nanotubes was that the electrons and holes combine with each other, resulting in low photoelectric efficiency. If this problem was solved, it will be the most economical transparent electrode.
Naturally, many scientists conducted various experiments to solve this problem. A typical method is to selectively transport only one electron or hole by doping boron or nitrogen. This prevents recombination and improves efficiency by 33%.
This is why Taeho focused so much on organic solar cell experiments. When this catalyst was made perfect, it will be the world’s most efficient organic solar cell.
Most of the failure diaries were related to the experiment on the catalyst.
Taeho failed every time. Though he succeeded in raising its efficiency, it didn’t solve other problems.
The problem noted in this experimental note covered more than that of organic solar cells. If solar power was generated, carbon nanotubes shrunk more than 5%, which caused the solar cell to be greatly distorted.
Taeho wrote down an analysis of the cause, but as it was filled with too many technical terms, Hyunwoo could not understand.
At that moment, Taeho was seen coming out of his research room.
With a glad expression, Hyunwoo approached him.
“Looks like you hit upon a good idea, didn’t you?” asked Hyunwoo.
“Not yet, hahaha.”
And then Hyunwoo asked Taeho some questions, showing him his failure diary.
He asked why the carbon nanotubes were deformed.
“I really can’t understand because of the technical terms.”
“Well, it’s simple, though I wrote about it with technical terms. One of the biggest causes of low efficiency of organic solar cells is static electricity. When solar power is generated, a lot of fine static electricity occurs. When the static electricity stimulates carbon nanotubes, severe contraction occurs.”
“Then, there is no deforming of carbon nanotubes when static electricity is removed, isn’t it?”
“Theoretically, yes. I’ve been doing research on that but can’t find the solution.”
At that moment, he thought of his father Duyoung.
Duyoung has a Ph. D degree in chemistry. He was excellent enough to have developed the new fuel concept of green oil.
Duyoung might be able to discover the catalyst that did not deform carbon nanotubes. If he can succeed, it would be a great invention that far exceeds that of green oil.
This time he headed for his father’s research room.
When he heard his son coming to his office, Duyoung stopped calculating on his computer and turned his head.
“Did I disturb you, Dad?”
“No, just come in.”
Hyunwoo sat next to his father. And then he showed Taeho’s failure diary to him and told him about the catalyst that deformed carbon nanotubes.
Just like a chemistry expert Duyoung instantly understood what his son was talking about.
“Do you want me to develop the catalyst?”
“You don’t have to rush the research. I just thought it might be good for you to do some other research when you have free time.”
“Well, I was feeling frustrated because I had no progress in my research. I think it’s a good idea to do research on a different topic, as you said.”
Duyoung gladly accepted Hyunwoo’s suggestion.
***
On the door of the conference room of Singyong Co., someone knocked.
The manager of private investigation team came in.
Chairman Munsik Choi of Singyong, who was reading a newspaper on the sofa, folded the paper and looked at him.
“Did you find something out?”
“Yes, here you go.”
The manager handed him a yellow file that he carried under his arm.
Munsik opened the file.
There was a lot of surprising information about Hyunwoo, his family, and his companies.
“KOVE DREAM? Is the president of Ani & Funny also serving as the president of KOVE DREAM?”
“Yes, sir. He not only owns KOVE DREAM but also N&C Korea. He also runs an alternative school named Haenim School.”
Munsik didn’t pay any attention to other names than KOVE DREAM. Though N&C Korea was once well known to the public, it didn’t grab the people’s attention as much as KOVE DREAM.
KOVE DREAM was the hot issue these days.
In particular, it was the talk of the town among businessmen. Thanks to the combination of the cheap labor in Vietnam and the high technical prowess of Korea, the prices of KOVE DREAM products were the most competitive in the world market.
So, companies in Korea watched very closely KOVE DREAM’s every move. As they could not compete with KOVE DREAM, they just wished their products were not produced by their rivals of KOVE DREAM.
Fortunately, KOVE didn’t have such a big negative impact on Korean companies. For most of the KOVE products competed with those produced in China.
But it was too early for them to feel at ease.
Right now many Korean technicians were flying to Vietnam. Although they moved to Vietnam because they lost competitiveness in Korea, someday even those Korean technicians in possessions at the core of technology might join them.
Of course, KOVE DREAM’s business area was different from Singyong. No matter how big KOVE DREAM could grow, it could not covet the business of oil refinery or communications that Singyong was doing.
The reason Munsik watched KOVE DREAM with interest because of its growth potential.
Though it’s a consortium of 20 local Korean companies in Vietnam, it was growing rapidly. As the current trend went on, the number of companies joining KOVE DREAM could be over 100 in several years.
Munsik just felt frustrated when he watched KOVE growing bigger and bigger.
“Why don’t I have a man who can present these kinds of great ideas?”
Lamenting like that, he turned over the next page of the file.
Obviously, the manager did an excellent job. In less than 15 days, he dug out all the detailed information by investigating Ani & Funny, KOVE DREAM, N&C Korea, alternative school as well as his people.
Thanks to his investigation efforts, the file was thick like a book.
Munsik ran his eyes through the file with a satisfied expression.
Suddenly, his eyes stopped at one of the names that came to his mind. There was a name that was familiar to him.
“Duyoung Jang? I heard about it somewhere? Who was he?”