the FAA about whether the phones were still allowed on airplanes.
Because there hadn’t been a proper recall yet, the FAA couldn’t flatly say
that the explosive smartphones shouldn’t be allowed on planes.”
The federal government concurred.
“In my mind,” warned CPSC chairman Elliot Kaye at a press
conference, “anyone who thinks that the best way for a recall is for a
company to go out on its own needs to have more than its phone checked.”
Samsung took a full week to start working with the CPSC, announcing
its cooperation with the agency on September 9. No official recall was yet
in place, and there continued to be more reports of phones bursting into
flames.
A Galaxy Note 7 that was being recharged ignited a Florida man’s Jeep
Grand Cherokee. The fire started on the dashboard and quickly spread to
the highly combustible air bags and eventually the engine and gas tank,
turning his car into a twisted hunk of metal that looked like a prop in a
Hollywood movie.
The media coverage in South Korea was relatively docile. I read
through a dozen laudatory news reports—one in Korea’s largest
newspaper, the Chosun, which marveled at “the power of communication
that led to the achievement of the recall.”
On December 5, 2016, I got a batch of six leaked documents from the
Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS), the nation’s
product safety regulator. An advisory panel of ten experts was gingerly
going along with Samsung’s official line, save a few recommendations for
consumers.
“When checking the information held by Samsung,” the panel
declared, “there is no need for a separate test.
“It is judged that company A’s batteries [Samsung SDI’s], which were
apprehended by Samsung, contain the faulty factors of batteries,” but that
company B’s (Amperex’s) batteries were “safe.” At the panel’s request,
Samsung agreed to modify some of its recall plans in South Korea. But
even the six outside advisers on the panel—some of them esteemed
university professors—concurred that Samsung’s decision “was sufficient
to remove the harm in the product.”
“They’re buying time,” speculated Park Chul Wan, an unassuming
engineer and former government battery explosion investigator. Chul Wan
had met me and my assistant, Max, in a noisy coffee shop in an obscure