This morning, I received a visit from Dr. Byeong Shin Nom, Chief Macroeconomist for International Commerce at the Embassy of the Republic of Korea here in Washington DC. A sadder sight I have not seen in weeks, at least – the poor guy shambled into my office and practically collapsed on the couch in front of the picture window overlooking the White House. Physically, he was a total wreck – his eyes were sunken and puffy; I doubt he had slept in a week, and his face sagged in the most dismal fashion. He looked like Death warmed over, for sure. Finally managing to pull himself up to face me, he sat there for an inordinate time, simply staring, by turns, at the oriental rug, the ceiling, then off into space, and at last at me; his expression was as blank as a newly-ravaged victim of grotesque sexual indignity, polluted by Donald Trump or Bill Clinton, take your pick. After several slow, painful blinks of his huge, watery brown eyes, he spoke.
“The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy is making a big mess in its pants, Tom,” he declared. “Samsung is the right leg of our economy, and the Galaxy Note 7 was its big toe.”
“You Koreans certainly have a way with metaphors,” I opined. “I suppose that now, after the amputation of that blackened, swollen, throbbing, pustulant and gangrenous toe, one which reeked so badly as to knock a seagull off a Seoul garbage truck in July, the prospect of merely walking without a pronounced, embarrassing and humiliating limp, let alone running strongly again in the pack along with the big dogs like China, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan, is a daunting one, to say the least.”
“Such sorrow,” he wailed, “has not been felt in South Korea since the International Monetary Fund bailout of 1997.”
“Have you figured out what’s making the phones explode and catch fire, at least?” I inquired.
“No,” he moaned. “Samsung’s engineers haven’t even managed to duplicate the problem. Try as they might, they can’t get even one single Galaxy Note 7 to do anything but sit there and provide state-of-the-art smart phone services. Meanwhile, practically every airline in the world has banned the Galaxy Note 7 from their aircraft and Samsung has been forced to cease all production and sales.”
“Not to mention the multi-billion dollar product recall,” I added.
“Yes,” he groaned, “please not to mention.”
“Truly,” I mused, “you must feel like the Korean grandmother in charge of a kye, who, having successfully financed three generations of liquor stores, payday loan outlets, fried chicken stands, botanicas and all-night gas stations in black and Hispanic neighborhoods, has mistakenly lent a million dollars to a cross-eyed Number One Son nerd that dropped out of MIT to start a world-beat gangsta rap recording studio in Massapequa.”
“It appears that you, yourself,” he grimly acknowledged, “have a notable talent for simile.”
“Samsung’s plan to have consumers return their Galaxy Note 7 cell phones in a specially designed, fireproof box,” I noted, “does not seem to have found favor with the airlines, either.”
“No,” he sighed, “it has not. But at least, as of last Friday, at the behest of your US Consumer Products Safety Commission, all major telecommunication carriers have agreed, in principle, to accept returns of Galaxy Note 7 smart phones.”
“Leaving,” I observed, “those Galaxy Note 7 owners who did not acquire their smart phones through a major US telecommunications carrier twisting slowly in the wind. Has Samsung managed to come up with a strategy for what those Galaxy Note 7 owners should do with their phones? I mean, they can’t ship them back on aircraft, can they? What option does that leave – returning them on a slow boat to Korea? Assuming Samsung would issue a refund without getting the phone back, I suppose they could just throw them away, but as soon as one of them catches fire in a landfill, the authorities will be out looking for anyone else who just chucked their Galaxy Note 7 in the trash. And it’s not like they can simply dig a hole in the back yard, fill it with water from the garden hose, toss their Galaxy Note 7 in and then cover it up with dirt, now is it? Smart phones are lousy with toxic metals that would leach out and contaminate the ground water. The same thing goes for chucking their Galaxy Note 7 off a bridge, for that matter. And, of course, there are the unfortunate Americans abroad with their new Galaxy Note 7 smart phones – very few of whom, I suspect, would like to return to the United States on any form of transportation other than a jet airliner.”
“Samsung has suggested,” he replied, “that if American Galaxy Note 7 owners are abroad, they can bring their phones with them and return their Galaxy Note 7s to their telecommunication carriers here in the US.”
“And what about the ones,” I pressed, “who are abroad and did not acquire their Galaxy Note 7 smart phones through a major US telecommunications carrier?”
“In that case,” he proposed, after a long pause for thought, “maybe they should visit Samsung headquarters in Suwon on their way back to America and return their Galaxy Note 7 there while enjoying the sights, sounds, hospitality and adventure that is South Korea.”
“And how are these Galaxy Note 7 owners supposed to bring their defective phones to Korea – or the United States, for that matter,” I wondered, “if there isn’t an airline in the world that will allow those devices on their aircraft?”
“Um… yes… well,” he muttered, “Samsung recommends they smuggle their Galaxy Note 7 onboard in an old sock.”
“I am beginning to sense the level of genius that created the Galaxy Note 7 in the first place,” I opined.
“How about if the Galaxy Note 7 owners who didn’t acquire their smart phones through a major US telecommunications carrier send you a photocopy of their purchase receipt for a refund and then gift wrap their smart phones and leave them on a park bench?”
Dr. Nom considered my suggestion for a few moments, then smiled and nodded his head. “Yes, that might actually work. I will convey that idea to Samsung immediately after this consultation.”
“Of course,” I observed, “when it came to handling the Galaxy Note 7 fire hazard issue, it appears that, as far as Samsung is concerned, the US was one thing and China is another.”
“Oh, I see,” he mumbled with a distinct shudder. “Then you have heard about China Central Television’s criticisms of Samsung.”
“Can you blame them?” I asked. “First, Samsung told the Chinese that their Galaxy Note 7 phones were completely safe because they used a different battery. Then the Chinese models started catching fire, and, as might be expected, videos of smoking, flaming Galaxy Note 7s were made. So what did Samsung do? They sent their representatives to China and told them to offer people money not to post those videos on the Internet. But all it took was one person to refuse the offer and tell the Chinese media what Samsung was up to. What were the executives at Samsung thinking – that all Chinese are so stupid and amoral that every single one of them with an exploding Galaxy Note 7 video will take nine hundred dollars and a new smart phone to erase it and keep their mouth?”
“Samsung apologized,” he objected, if somewhat half-heartedly.
“The apology,” I pointed out, “cited ‘misunderstandings’ that ‘may have’ been caused ‘due to an unclear communication in the process,’ whatever that means. Let’s get real here, shall we? Even under the most charitable interpretation, Samsung jumped to the conclusion that the battery supplier was at the bottom of the problem and then promulgated that wishful thinking as fact. But did Samsung apologize for what amounted, at the very least, to an act of egregious stupidity? No, they apologized for some kind nebulous communication problem.”
“You must understand, Mr. Collins,” he implored, “in Asian societies, it is extremely important to save face.”
“Provided,” I shot back, “that your face doesn’t get burned off by a flaming Galaxy Note 7.”
“Point taken,” he admitted with resigned shrug.
“At least,” I consoled, “it looks like Samsung has finally come to its senses. I hear that it’s going to open some booths at airports where travelers can exchange their Galaxy Note 7s and get refunds.”
“Yes,” he confirmed with an wan smile. “You have no idea, Mr. Collins, how long it took me to talk them into doing that.”
“I hope your efforts are appropriately rewarded,” I remarked. “Now – do you supposed you would have any luck talking them out of owning their safety testing laboratory, instead of using third-party labs like everybody else does?”
“No,” he murmured, dropping his head sadly to stare once more at the oriental carpet. “Samsung is much too concerned about industrial espionage. They insist that competitors could steal highly valuable trade secrets from a third-party safety testing lab. It’s a corporate cultural thing.”
“Sounds like a corporate culture of blithering paranoia,” I said. “Be that as it may, however, – what can I do for you with respect to these issues?”
At that, Dr. Nom summoned what reserves of resolution he still possessed and drew himself up, looking me straight in the eye. “Mr. Collins, Samsung has requested that I formulate a strategy to deflect blame from the company to… other respondents.”
“Well,” I began, “Samsung can’t blame its battery suppliers, because it owns some of them. It can blame the safety testing laboratory because, as we just discussed, it own that, too. The same thing goes for nearly all the other parts and the factories where the Galaxy Note 7 was assembled. It seems that vertical integration is more or less an obsession at Samsung.”
“Yes,” he concurred, “they take their inspiration from Henry Ford, and I have been told time and again of the many advantages of vertical integration.”
“Unfortunately,” I mused, “it looks like Samsung has just discovered one of that strategy’s significant pitfalls.”
“Can Samsung perhaps blame the software?” he hopefully suggested.
“Not recommended,” I advised. “The Galaxy Note 7 runs Android, and Google is one of the few companies big enough that Samsung can’t get away with bullying it.”
“Maybe,” he persisted, “we could blame some app that the users downloaded?”
“All of them?” I chided. “Come now – Samsung would be going out on a limb there, no doubt about it. The app – or perhaps, there might be more than one, but it’s hard to believe there could be a lot of them – the culprit software would have to be present on all of the affected Galaxy Note 7 smart phones. Sure, Samsung might as well investigate that, but I don’t think that’s very likely, do you?”
“No,” he conceded with a sad shake of his head. “Not very likely. What should I tell them, Mr. Collins?”
“Tell them,” I suggested, “that they should blame the whole thing on North Korean saboteurs.”
Dr. Nom’s jaw dropped. He sat bolt upright. His eyes went wide. Then he laughed, long and hard. “God Almighty, Collins!” he shouted. “That’s brilliant! Of course – accuse the North Koreans! Say that their agents infiltrated the South to strike a blow at heart of the South Korean consumer electronics industry!”
“And Samsung doesn’t even have to claim it publicly,” I noted. “As a matter of fact, they shouldn’t.”
“Really?” Dr. Nom leaned forward on the couch expectantly. “What should they do instead?”
“Hire some bloggers to leak the story on the Web,” I advised. “It has such incredible conspiracy theory potential that within a month, billions of people all over the world will be thinking that it’s true.”
“And Samsung’s reputation will be restored!” he exulted, leaping up from the couch to give my hand an inordinately vigorous shake.
“Samsung’s image will be transformed from that of an inept, negligent, bumbling, insensitive, lying miscreant,” I assured him, “to that of a sympathetic victim.”
“The North Koreans will go ballistic!” Dr. Nom enthused. “And the more they deny it, the truer it will seem! Please, Mr. Collins, work out a detailed plan for this and get it to me by secure courier as soon as possible!”
“My pleasure,” I assured him as he made for the door, a new man. “Of course,” I cautioned, “there’s a slight chance that this ploy might spark a nuclear war.”
“A risk well worth taking,” he called back as he exited, “to restore Samsung’s smart phone market share!”