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It's been a whirlwind year for Pantech Wireless. The Atlanta-based subsidiary of South Korean cellphone maker Pantech Group has released six phones in the last 12 months, including four in the last quarter. AT&T is promoting two of the handsets in TV spots as ideal holiday gifts. Patrick Beattie, Pantech Wireless' vice president of marketing and sales, says the company has never been busier.

While wireless giants like Nokia (nyse: NOK - news - people ) and Samsung slash their forecasts, Pantech Wireless, also known as PWI, is counting on its portfolio of slim, reasonably priced cellphones and its close ties with AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ) to help it grow in 2009.

Beattie says PWI's focus on stylish phones that mostly sell for $80 or less should boost its prospects in the current downturn. "We think our value is really resonating with customers in the U.S.," he adds.

Parent Pantech has a long and storied history in wireless. Following its founding in 1991, it says it created the world's first CDMA phone in 1994 and the first fingerprint-recognition phone in 2004. In its home market of South Korea, Pantech is the No. 3 cellphone maker, after Samsung and LG. In 2007, Pantech Group had revenues of $1.7 billion and sold 7.5 million Pantech-branded phones. It operates eight regional subsidiaries worldwide, in Beijing; Mumbai, India; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Sao Paulo, Brazil, among other cities.

PWI has sold products in the U.S. since the 1990s, but didn't target the market seriously until 2006, Beattie says.

Industry observers say PWI is taking the right steps, but remains a small player. Ramon Llamas, a senior research analyst at IDC, says Pantech ranks around No. 25 globally in handset sales, on par with Japan's Casio Hitachi. (IDC's figures, however, don't include the contract manufacturing work Pantech does for other brands.)

At the end of third-quarter 2008, PWI had just under 1% of the U.S. cellphone market, according to IDC. Beattie declined to give market share numbers, but said both PWI's and Pantech's sales figures had improved over the past two years.

To break out in the U.S., PWI must work closely with operators, says IDC's Llamas. "Distribution is the name of the game. It's great to be part of AT&T, but they should try to get in with more national carriers," he says. He is enthusiastic about PWI's Matrix and Slate phones, which have full Qwerty keyboards, noting that Americans are quickly snapping up messaging phones.

Nearly 300,000 Koreans play virtual golf regularly, and Golfzon, one of the country's fastest-growing companies, is enjoying the trend

By Moon Ihlwan

At 6:30 p.m. on a Friday, Park Sang Pil and three of his colleagues at South Korea's BCcard rush to play a round of golf together. Although their tee time is just 10 minutes away, they still haven't decided on which course they will be playing. Not to worry: With just the click of a mouse, they can choose from more than 50 courses, including the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland (BusinessWeek.com, 7/11/08) and Pebble Beach in California. That's because Park and his pals are playing just a block from their downtown Seoul office, at Lemon Screen Golf Café. At the café, the foursome swing real clubs to hit real golf balls into a wall-size screen displaying virtual reality fairways.

Virtual golfing is hot in Korea. Park is one of nearly 300,000 South Koreans regularly playing 18-hole rounds at "screen golf cafés" that have been mushrooming in the country in the past couple of years. "Screen golf is great," says the 30-year-old assistant manager at the credit-card company. "It doesn't matter if it's hot or cold, rains or snows; you don't have to spend all day to play a round of golf; you can play it at night—and most of all, it is cheap."

That's music to the ears of Kim Wonil, chief operating officer of Golfzon, one of Korea's fastest-growing companies. Kim, 33, reckons by the end of this year there will be about 3,000 golf cafés across the country operating a total of 12,000 simulators, more than half made by Golfzon. "The growth potential is enormous," says Kim, one of the finalists in BusinessWeek's annual search) for the best young entrepreneurs in Asia.

Satisfying the Pent-Up Demand for Golf

Back in 2000, Kim and his 61-year-old father, Kim Young Chan, set up Golfzon to make computer simulators targeting golf novices who are trying to get the hang of the sport without having to splurge on exorbitantly expensive country club memberships and greens fees. Today the company has emerged as the world's largest provider of hardware and software for virtual reality golf, with projected revenues of some $77 million in 2008, more than triple its $23 million in sales from last year. (Earnings for 2007 were $9.2 million but the company declines to give its profit forecast for this year.)

The dramatic growth underscores the pent-up demand for the sport long associated with the rich and privileged in Korea. It costs about $250 for a real-world golfer to play a round, but tee times are hard to secure and memberships for many country clubs fetch more than half a million dollars. A round of 18-hole virtual golf costs $15 to $25.

Using a simulator for golfing (BusinessWeek.com, 3/18/08) isn't new. For years it has been around mainly as a teaching tool at golf clinics or as a rich man's toy. But in Korea—as advances in simulation technology enable it to replicate every fairway detail of coveted courses—virtual reality golf has quickly become a cheap alternative for many who can't afford to play on outdoor courses. In the U.S. numerous public golf courses charge each player $25 or less, whereas in Korea public courses are scarce and they aren't much cheaper than those run privately.

Technology for virtual sports keep evolving, too. "A couple of years ago, screen golf was mostly for fun, although you could improve your course management skills," says Yoon Dong Wook, a middle-aged salary man who took a $15 lunch-hour package at Lemon Screen Golf Café that offers a nine-hole round plus lunch. "Now I come here as much for practice as for fun," Yoon says as his mat tilts downward for a second shot to replicate a downhill slope on which his ball lies.

South Korean police officers walk by displays of models of mock North Korea's Scud-B missile, left, and other South Korean missiles at Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 20, 2008. South Korea said Monday it was business as usual in North Korea, casting skepticism on media reports that Pyongyang was poised to make an announcement possibly concerning the health of its leader

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea accepted a North Korean proposal to hold military talks, a Defense Ministry official said Saturday, amid continuing tensions on the divided peninsula.

Ties between the two countries, which are still technically at war, have soured since South Korea's pro-U.S. conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, took office in February with a pledge to get tough with North Korea.

In protest, North Korea suspended reconciliation talks and threatened to cut any remaining relations if Seoul continues a policy of "reckless confrontation."

But South Korea, which denied this past week it had taken a hard-line stance toward the North, agreed to a meeting Monday inside the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula, the South Korean official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The move came a day after North Korea proposed the talks involving lieutenant colonel-grade officers to discuss military communication lines between the two Koreas.

Earlier this month, the two sides failed to make any progress in colonel-level talks _ their first official contact since Lee took office.

During that meeting, the North lodged a strong complaint over leaflets critical of its leader, Kim Jong Il, sent over the border via balloon by private activists in South Korea. North Korea threatened to expel South Koreans working at joint projects in the North if the propaganda did not stop.

The two Koreas agreed in 2004 to end decades of fierce propaganda battles which often used leaflets and messages over powerful loudspeakers near their border denouncing the other side.

Also Saturday, North Korea stepped up its hostile rhetoric against South Korea.

"If someone commits provocations against (the North), it will not miss an opportunity but resolutely respond to confrontation with confrontation and war with war and mercilessly punish the aggressors," the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary from the country's official Korean Central News Agency.

The 1950-53 war between the two Koreas ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula technically still at war.