Samsung is the best-known brand name South Korea has ever produced, ranking seventh in the 100 best global brands compiled by Interbrand, a brand consultancy. Its Galaxy smartphones have lifted its — and by extension South Korea’s — high-tech image more than any other Korean product.

Having already overtaken Sony and other Japanese companies it once mimicked, Samsung has grown powerful enough to challenge Apple, an icon of American innovation.

To many South Koreans, the Note 7 recall, the biggest ever in the mobile phone industry, is just another painful lesson for Samsung to learn from and pay for — the recall is estimated to cost it $6.2 billion — in its quest to dominate yet another industry.

“All manufacturing companies, including the American and Japanese, make mistakes,” said Park Bo-yeon, 29, who was recently browsing in a handset shop in downtown Seoul where a notice urged customers to hand in Note 7s. “What matters is whether you can learn from them and move on. Samsung always has.”

Ms. Park suspected that the Note 7 fiasco had been overblown by the American news media, which she said looked down on Samsung. She said she was disappointed that Samsung had failed to explain why some Note 7s heated up and caught fire. But she was equally impressed by Samsung’s “courageous decision to terminate the Note 7 before anyone died.”

Among South Koreans, though, the name Samsung also evokes greed and secrecy. They often describe the company as a predator that makes profits not so much through innovation as by ruthlessly squeezing its numerous domestic parts suppliers.

And Samsung has never shaken off its image as an imitator, though a highly efficient one. (Last year, it was ordered to pay $548 million in damages to Apple for infringing on its iPhone design patents, a case that is now at the United States Supreme Court.)