March 10, 2025
SEOUL – This year’s APEC summit, hosted by South Korea, will place artificial intelligence and demographic shifts at the forefront of the agenda for discussion — topics that have never before taken the spotlight at the regional economic forum.
South Korea’s Ambassador Yoon Seong-mee, chair of the 2025 APEC Senior Officials’ Meeting, on Sunday emphasized the urgency and significance in prioritizing cooperation on AI technologies by the 21 APEC economies and responses to population changes such as low birth rates and aging societies.
“Especially, AI and demographic structure are topics that have never been addressed at APEC, while the previous APEC has covered a wide range of issues such as trade liberalization, labor and education,” Yoon said in Korean when asked by The Korea Herald how the 2025 APEC summit would differentiate itself from previous iterations.
Yoon made the remarks during a press conference following the first Senior Officials’ Meeting, held from Feb. 24 to Sunday in the historic city of Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province. The APEC summit, scheduled to be held in the same city from late October to early November under the theme “Building a Sustainable Tomorrow,” will mark South Korea’s first time hosting the event in 20 years, since it was last held in Busan in 2005.
“There are no fields unrelated to AI. Therefore, AI is a critically important issue with a massive impact, influencing our future across all sectors worldwide. The same applies to the issue of demographic structure,” Yoon said.
The ambassador explained that all APEC members will be affected by demographic changes in the long term, despite the varying speeds at which they encounter such challenges.
“I believe that the fact of proactively selecting these globally significant issues, which require serious consideration on an international scale, and introducing them into the APEC discussion framework already represents a major contribution on our part as host of the APEC summit,” Yoon said. “The very act of putting such profound and thought-provoking agenda topics on the table is, in itself, a meaningful contribution.”
As agreed with member countries, APEC 2025 will have discussions on harnessing the vast potential of AI in a sustainable and inclusive manner as a key agenda. South Korea has also proposed specific cooperation initiatives and capacity-building programs aimed at transforming demographic challenges into opportunities, rather than crises.
US, China, Russia, Taiwan attend
The first meeting of senior officials marked the official beginning of the APEC-related schedule leading up to the summit and served as the very first opportunity to introduce Gyeongju to the official delegations of APEC members in advance, according to Yoon.
The meeting drew around 2,000 participants, including representatives from 21 APEC member countries as well as the APEC Secretariat, according to the Foreign Ministry in Seoul. The US APEC team, led by Ambassador Matt Murray, also attended the meeting.
Yoon and Lee Ji-yoon, an APEC senior official as well as the deputy director general of international economic affairs at South Korea’s Foreign Ministry, held bilateral meetings with delegations from Canada, China, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the US, among others, according to the Foreign Ministry.
During the briefing, Eduardo Pedrosa, executive director of the APEC Secretariat, brushed off any worries when asked about whether concerns were raised over potential impacts of the political turbulence in South Korea for the summit.
“APEC meetings have been held under similarly changing political situations, but the APEC work has continued throughout the years. So, I think most stakeholders and experts are pretty confident that this work will go ahead,” Pedrosa said in English at the news conference. “There is a very strong team.”
Pedrosa also pointed out that one of the issues brought up during this meeting was the “need to respond to new challenges that emerged from the evolving trade environment,” reiterating, “We are in an evolving trade environment.”
Pedrosa, however, refrained from providing a direct answer when asked by The Korea Herald whether there were concerns about a shift toward protectionism, which contradicts APEC’s vision of free and open trade in the Indo-Pacific region, as US President Donald Trump has imposed blanket tariffs, and whether the issue would be addressed at the APEC summit.
“We don’t know how trade policy will change over the next months, but one thing I can say, as far as the current administration is concerned, is that President Trump was a very active supporter of the APEC Putrajaya Vision during his first term as president,” Pedrosa said. “So I think that gives us a very good sign of how committed the current administration will be.”