More than half of Galaxy Note 7 owners in South Korea have swapped their used phablets for new ones, six days after Samsung Electronics Co. began a replacement program as part of a global recall over battery problems, industry officials said Sunday.

The number of Note 7 owners who have received replacements exceeded 200,000 as of Saturday, the officials said.

About 429,000 Note 7s were said to have been sold in South Korea.

Only 5 percent of Note 7 owners are said to have received a full refund, according to them.

Samsung telephoned Note 7 owners to advise them to swap their phablets for new ones, in an effort to swiftly end the replacement program before it starts sales of new Note 7s this week.

On Sunday, most service stores of the nation's three mobile carriers opened for business to help speed up the replacement program.

Samsung started selling the Note 7 in South Korea on Aug. 19, but halted sales and conducted a global recall earlier this month following reports of some of the devices catching fire while being charged.

By using a software update, Samsung has limited the current Note 7 battery to a maximum charge of 60 percent and offered financial incentives to Note 7 owners.

In order to complete the recall process as soon as possible, the company postponed the resumption of Note 7 sales for three days to Oct. 1, which has been suspended for weeks due to the battery problem.

"We've made the decision to minimize customer inconvenience and speed up the process," said a company official. "We will do our best to settle the situation." (Yonhap)