South Korea will increase battery safety regulation in wake of Note 7 fiasco

Late last month, Samsung continued its prolonged Note 7 apology tour with a global press conference detailing months of internal and third-party research, coupled withplans to increase its safety measures moving forward.

While all of that self-humbling seems to have gone a ways toward appeasing a portion of the smartphone-buying public, the company’s home country of South Korea (which has had its share of issues with Samsung of late) is looking to amp up regulation around lithium-ion batteries, no doubt spurred on by Samsung’s on-going woes.

This morning, the country’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy issued a statement highlighting its intent to provide more testing around the ubiquitous technology.

“We ask that the industry shares the view that making efforts to ensure safety is equally as critical as developing new products through technological innovation,” Vice Minister Jeong Marn-ki said in a statement provided to Reuters.

The ministry didn’t provide much in the way of details with regards to its plans moving forward, but it does plan to keep an especially close eye on Samsung as the company looks to bolster its own methodology. The new regulation would also require more stringent reporting of defective devices to the government, along with a strengthening of recall requirements.