Being second best in your home country may be one thing, but when you’re relatively unknown in the rest of the world, you know you still have a lot of road to cover. Think of it as a huge opportunity. Pantech is huge in Korea, and is now looking elsewhere to expand and grow its business. The mobile phone maker plans to take Europe by storm, blitzing several nations with –count ‘em – 15 new handsets. It already has offices set up in the UK and Netherlands.

One of the highlights of this onslaught of phones is the PU-5000. Referred to as the “BIG-GUN”, it comes with dual cameras, 3G UMTS, video telephony and MP3 playback.

If snapping pictures is your thing, you might want to look into the PG 8000, a GSM phone that looks almost like a full-on camera. With a 2.1 megapixel camera, MP3/MP4 playback, FM radio and Bluetooth, the PG 8000 has a healthy helping of features.

Among the CDMA offerings are a couple of multimedia phones that has everyone drooling. The IM-U1100 is basically a 1GB music player that doubles as a cell phone. It’ll take AAC, MP3, H.264/MPEG 4 formats. The U100 goes one step further and markets itself as a cell phone with PMP functionality.

It would be impossible to cover all of the 30 handsets Pantech has shown at 3GSM, but based on these four phones, they should have a strong presence in Europe pretty darn soon.