Pantech Group going broke?

Uh oh, this can’t be good. I thought that Pantech was doing pretty well for itself lately, expanding into international markets like never before. I guess I was wrong. Turns out that Pantech Group is “on the verge of bankruptcy”, according to Telecoms Korea.

Korea’s third largest mobile phone manufacturer has requested a number of creditors to “launch a corporate workout program in order to deal with liquidity [sic] crisis it now is faced with.” The cell phone market is ridiculously competitive, and when you’re loading yourself up with a pile of debt, and not balancing things out with oodles of sales, you’re just asking for trouble.

That said, Pantech Group representatives are saying that these difficulties are “temporary” and they will “grow and compete.” We’ll see.