The picture of the main author should appear first, his picture should be larger, and this should read "Research scientist Hong-Jun Cho and his colleages". Same as the paper.
Except in science the last author of the paper is the most significant one. So the way this article is written is just right.
As far as how all of this played out in this case, who knows, but I don't see anything particularly wrong with having either the first author or group lead as the main focus of the article, as long as both of them (and the other contributors) are openly acknowledged, which appears to have happened.
If it matters, the group's Twitter account is worth a read https://twitter.com/miricagroup.
In medicine usually. Not all disciplines follow this order.