Samsung isn't throwing open its doors because it’s feeling generous. It’s trying to salvage both its reputation and consumer trust after dozens of videos, photographs and reports last year showed the Galaxy Note 7 bursting into flames. Samsung identified the battery as the culprit and — less than a month after the Note 7’s high-profile, mid-August release — recalled the nearly 2.5 million units on the market.

And then it happened again. Some of the “safer” replacement phones went up in smoke, too.

Samsung knew it had messed up. Badly. So after two recalls, the company killed the Note 7 in October 2016. The debacle cost Samsung an estimated $17 billion in sales. It also cost it the lead in the global smartphone market, with Apple leapfrogging Samsung in the fourth quarter of 2016 to become the world’s biggest smartphone vendor. (The last time Apple held the lead was in 2014 when it introduced its first big-screen phones, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.)

“It was an eye-opening experience,” Koh Dong-jin (better known as D.J. Koh), head of Samsung’s mobile business, tells me from Samsung’s sprawling Digital City campus in Suwon, about 21 miles outside of Seoul.

“Afterward, I set up a principle: Meaningful innovation should keep going where we can make our customers happy continuously. But on top of it all, keep as a top priority customer safety,” Koh says the day before my helicopter flight. “I strongly believe I can bring our customers’ trust back.”

Which is where my visit to South Korea comes in.

