Samsung confirmed to Ars Technica that an error during internal testing of a refrigerator software update caused an incident in South Korea on September 22. The company said the test was suspended after reports arrived, overseas markets had no identified impact, and service centers were handling affected units.
Star News Korea reported dozens of user complaints involving Bespoke AI four-door refrigerators, many from 2024 or later. Users described units losing power or cooling and displays freezing during a SmartThings update. These are reported symptoms, not a technical postmortem.
The available reports do not give a total number of affected refrigerators, explain how a test update reached customers, or describe a preventive fix. That makes the incident more specific than a generic “smart appliance update went wrong,” but leaves its scale and recurrence risk unresolved. The evidence supports a Korea-limited test-process failure according to Samsung, not a conclusion that routine updates generally disable Samsung fridges.