The same morning, I was told, Samsung had gathered executives at its
campus at Suwon, an hour’s drive south of Seoul, for a meeting on the
devices that were catching fire. They were to hear a briefing from a
Samsung executive who had returned from Bethesda, Maryland, where his
delegation had met with the CPSC in an attempt to smooth things over.
The American officials were concerned over consumer complaints about
how Samsung was handling its recall and exchange program.
But the real purpose of the meeting, I was told, was to attempt to keep
morale up.
“Stay calm and confident,” my source told me was the message of the
meeting, after being briefed by her boss.
Her boss told her that the police had not confirmed that the fires or
explosions were due to the Note 7. “We did lots of tests here,” she was
told, “but nothing more than smoke comes from the device. So the media
made it up. The media keeps silent about Apple products and converges on
Samsung only.”
On the defensive, Samsung had been failing in its efforts to repair its
damaged relationship with its customers; instead, based on what I was
hearing from my sources, it resorted internally to a counterattack on Apple
in an effort to divert attention. To me it demonstrated the company’s
arrogance—as well as its underlying shame, insecurity, and desperation.
The company knew it needed to turn the debacle of the Note 7 around fast
—or see its brand, and even the prestige of South Korea, sullied by its new
smartphone.
—
“I AM ASHAMED TO be Korean,” a shop owner named Mr. Park told me as
he bagged my goods at a store around the corner from my apartment.
Mr. Park’s convenience store—up the hill from the nearby U.S.
military base—was the regular start of my hour-long morning walk
through Seoul, a helter-skelter neon-lit megacity of brick homes, hills, and
mountains. I would pass the military base and stroll through the rowdy
drinking district of Itaewon, walking by the transgender prostitutes
finishing assignations from the previous night, approaching the modern
glass headquarters of Samsung’s in-house advertising agency, Cheil.
Around the corner and to the left of the ad agency headquarters was