Has anyone thought that Samsung possibly decided to end production of the Note 7 because of the cultural difference? Remember that Samsung is a household name in their home country and they're held to a very high standard. I'm sure there is a good amount of people who knows that South Korea is very critical about how their public image is represented to the rest of the world. So they issued the first recall, but I'm pretty sure that once they started to receive new reports and claims regarding the same issue with the "safe" Note 7's. They decided to save face by stopping sales as well as production and to take the loss instead of risking more media backlash that would possibly tarnish the companys name and reputation even further. The public apology from the head of Samsung supports my opinion even more, but I'm sure others will say otherwise.
The idea of their image may have been the reason that the first recall happened so quickly. If this would have been almost any other company, there probably would have been another few weeks before they admitted, 'yup, we need to see this.'