[AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note I717] mycatisether:
I'm making this guide for anyone whose purchased a Korean Galaxy Note and have had a hell of a time getting it to work properly.

In Canada, the Note will only work with Rogers or Fido due to frequency and compatibility issues. Even other networks that support the Note will not work with a Korean Galaxy Note and flashing the telus modems found in other threads has not worked for me, causing the phone to get stuck in a restart loop.

First, upgrading to ICS:

Download the UF13 stock E160L firmware from this website:

http://pspmaster.tistory.com/180

For those with SHV-E160 S and K phones, stock firmwares can also be found on this website with a bit of searching

Flashing:

Put the Korean Note into download mode by holding down the volume down button + home button + power button

- The Note will then display a tonne of Korean text on-screen, press the volume up button to actually enter the download mode

Then run Odin in administrator mode (not really sure if it makes a difference but might as well), make sure Auto Reboot and F. Reset Time are the only checked items, click the PDA button and select the firmware file

Then click start and wait till the phone reboots, the loading screen will have a pink U+ logo and it may take some time.

Once it has booted, insert your microSIM card (yeah for some reason it uses a microSIM, other models don't seem to, wtf Korea?) and let it connect to the network. Once it connects you're good.

Rooting:

(courtesy of locomaniac, his thread is here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1671987)

Download these 4 files:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u0rz0tuioj3irhz/cwm-160l-update.zip

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ds3sp7bulu54ckg/samsungE160recovery.tar

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lwuadwg4bx7wjro/Superuser-i717-ICS-signed.zip

https://www.dropbox.com/s/si43ikqpcdbzpod/Tegrak.rec.tar

Put the cwm-update160l-update.zip and the Superuser-i717-ICS-signed.zip onto your external SD card

Then shut off the phone and put it into download mode once again (vol down + home + power)

Once it's in download mode, flash the Tegrak.rec.tar in the same fashion as you did with the UF13 stock ROM, it will overwrite the recovery partition of your phone and your phone will then reset

Power down the phone once again and get it back into download mode, this time you'll flash the samsungE160recovery.tar which will install Clockworkmod Recovery into the recovery partition (not sure why you need the Tegrak recovery as well other than its ability to root the phone but do it anyways)

- Please note, if you only want root and not Clockworkmod Recovery which in my opinion, is stupid, do not flash the samsungE160recovery.tar, just go to http://pspmaster.tistory.com/181 and download the two files that correspond to your model, it does indeed have the E160S and E160K kernels as well. Copy the .zip file into your external SD card, then Flash the .tar file using ODIN then boot into recovery by holding the volume up + volume down + power button until the samsung logo appears at which point you'll have to release the buttons. It will boot into Tegrak recovery, select install from .zip, select the .zip file you downloaded and then restart the phone. Once restarted, you'll have to download Tegrak from the Google play store and open the app and select the root my phone option at which point your phone should have root access. Then download superuser from the Google play store and bam you're golden.

For those of you who want CWM Recovery, once the ODIN flash of samsungE160recovery.tar is done, it will reboot. Shut down the phone, then hold down the volume up and volume down buttons with the power button, let go of them all once the samsung logo appears to boot the phone into recovery mode. It will now be CWM Recovery rather than the Tegrak recovery, select install from zip and select cwm-160l-update.zip and install it. Once installed, you will need to select the reboot recovery option (might be under advanced menu, not sure). Or just power down the phone and reboot into recovery. Once it's in, you'll notice that CWM Recovery has been updated, but the menu options still look the same. Familiarity is good. Now choose install from zip and select the Superuser-i717-ICS-signed.zip file and install that.

Once you're done, reboot the phone and you will now have root access.

Fixing the SMS system:

(instructions courtesy of the crazy Chinese developers over at koxda http://koxda.com/thread-14201-1-1.html)

For some reason, Korea has a different messaging system than anywhere else in the world causing messages to send properly only if you're using a third party app like goSMS, and labeling everything you receive as from an unknown number. Obviously, this is ridiculous, so to fix that, you'll need the root access you just obtained as well as Root Explorer (File Manager), an app you can purchase off Google play or pirate with Mobilism. It's a wonderful app that will let you do anything you want to any file you want.

You'll also need mms.apk which is basically the international version of the messaging system from here:

http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/360753/Mms-apk.html

Copy this file to your SD Card

Now you'll want to open Root Explorer, and open the "system" folder then the "app" folder. Here, find 6 files that begin with SEC-MMS and delete them, you may have to press the mount r/w button at the top to get read write permission but do so and you'll be able to delete the files. Then, copy the mms.apk using root explorer from your external SD card into the system/app folder.

Once you're done, close everything and restart your phone.

Once it restarts, you'll notice that Android will attempt to upgrade something, that something is basically the phone installing the mms.apk for you and it will now appear in the applications list. Open the mms.apk, press the menu touch key and go to settings. Here, you need to change the text input method to unicode and then set the message centre number to +15149931123 for Fido, or +17057969300 for Rogers (can also try +17057969500). Make sure to type in that plus sign or it will not work properly.

*Note the messaging program may crash occasionally, keep trying and it should work, once you're done you'll be replacing the normal messaging system which has become unstable with something else.

That something else is the Handcent SMS app which you can download off Google play for free. Install it, then open the app, go to settings, application settings and press the Default Messaging application button, select All (SMS&MMS). Then press back, click notification settings and uncheck the Enable popup option.

AAAANNND YOU'RE DONE

If you have other Korean Note specific problems like the lack of secret menu options to repair your touch keys (which I had, goddamn you Samsung), send me a pm and I'll make another thread on how to fix it, it involves flashing temporary firmware that I really don't have the bandwidth to upload at the moment.