On October 31 and November 1, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Summit in Gyeongju. The summit proved to be a pivotal second for South Korea’s evolving international financial and protection technique, showcasing Lee’s pragmatic foreign policy agenda—aligning trade coverage with technological statecraft—as Seoul balanced strategic relations with each Washington and Beijing. Throughout the summit, South Korea strategically leveraged its diplomatic affect to strengthen Seoul’s standing inside the multilateral financial framework, safe trade offers with the United States, and provoke public–personal partnerships throughout important and rising technology sectors.
Multilateral diplomacy, bilateral balancing
South Korea has performed a particular position in APEC’s historical past, from its institution and growth of diplomatic membership to the modernization of the discussion board’s financial agenda. South Korea final hosted the APEC summit in 2005 in Busan, the place it championed the discount of regional tariffs as a way of enhancing Indo-Pacific financial prosperity.
Twenty years later, nevertheless, the geopolitical system is marked by rising financial competitors beneath an more and more fractured international trade regime. To tackle these challenges, this yr’s APEC conferences—beneath the banner of “Building a Sustainable Tomorrow: Connectivity, Innovation and Prosperity”—emphasised the necessity of regional cooperation, shared trade advantages, bolstered provide chain resiliency, and expanded regional science and technology innovation. Despite issues over US-China financial competitors, South Korea efficiently convened twenty-one nations from throughout the Indo-Pacific area.
This yr’s proceedings additionally included the first-ever APEC CEO Summit on October 29-31, which targeted on increasing industry-to-industry relations. Gathering greater than 1,700 enterprise executives from round the world, the CEO Summit aimed to broaden APEC’s public-private partnerships throughout important industries together with on power, digital and synthetic intelligence (AI) transformation, trade, and biotechnology. Additionally, this yr’s multilateral discussions concluded with the 2025 APEC Leaders’ Gyeongju Declaration, highlighting consensus on financial and technology cooperation and a shared “determination to build a region of peace and prosperity” in the Indo-Pacific.
Amid the rush of APEC conferences, South Korea additionally hosted a sequence of profitable bilateral summits with world leaders, together with US President Donald Trump for his second assembly with Lee, Chinese President Xi Jinping for his first go to to South Korea in eleven years, and lately elected Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae.
An emphasis on AI innovation
Building on August’s APEC Digital and AI Ministerial Statement, South Korea spearheaded worldwide consensus-building for AI regulation and innovation at the summit. This culminated in the summit’s individuals making cross-regional commitments specified by the APEC Artificial Intelligence Initiative (2026-2030).
South Korea’s emphasis on science and technology innovation comes at a time when advances in AI are redefining conventional pillars of worldwide financial cooperation and competitors. Following the United States’ and China’s lead, South Korea has introduced its personal agenda for constructing a “sovereign AI” system and performed an more and more visible role as a convener of worldwide fora on AI innovation and deployment.
As a core pillar of Lee’s financial coverage, South Korea has additionally launched new complete help applications, focusing on main South Korean corporations to advance industrial capacity-building and develop the home workforce wanted to drive AI innovation. On the worldwide stage, South Korea has emphasized the balancing of threat versus reward for AI innovation via multilateral platforms equivalent to the Summit for Democracy in March 2024, the AI Seoul Summit in May 2024, and Responsible AI in the Military Domain (REAIM) Summit in September 2024.
However, regardless of international curiosity in AI growth coverage, the panorama for geopolitical cooperation on AI norms and rules stays nascent. But the APEC AI Initiative marks the first documented settlement endorsed by each the United States and China—additional demonstrating South Korea’s position in middle-power science and technology diplomacy.
US-South Korea trade deal and rising technology cooperation
Ahead of the APEC Leaders’ Summit, Trump and Lee met for the second time after months of tariff negotiations. During the first Trump-Lee Summit final August, Washington and Seoul failed to achieve an official settlement to cut back US tariffs on account of the undeniable fact that South Korea’s proposed $350 billion funding bundle remained comparatively nebulous.
On October 29, nevertheless, following Trump and Lee’s assembly, South Korea introduced the profitable conclusion of an official US-South Korea trade deal. The deal decreased US “reciprocal tariffs” on the South Korean auto {industry} from 25 p.c to fifteen p.c over the coming months. Based on the settlement, South Korea will make investments $350 billion in important US industries and markets—marking a stark increase from the $140 billion in promised international direct funding commitments the United States secured beneath the Biden administration. While $150 billion will go towards increasing US-South Korea cooperation on shipbuilding, Seoul has acknowledged that the remaining $200 billion shall be direct money investments, capped at $20 billion yearly, for future initiatives.
Additionally, the US-South Korea trade deal got here amid a flurry of productive, industry-level memorandums of understanding (MOUs) on expanded technology cooperation signed between the two nations. Most notably, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pledged to offer greater than 260,000 graphics processing items to Korean corporations together with Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor Group, and SK Group in help of South Korea’s home AI growth.
Additionally, beneath the newly declared US-ROK Technology Prosperity Deal, each Washington and Seoul goal to broaden cooperation on innovation for AI technology growth and deployment. Under this deal, the two nations reasserted their commitments to “elevate the U.S.-ROK Alliance” via shut collaboration on “developing pro-innovation AI policy frameworks.” Neither the APEC AI Initiative nor the US-South Korea AI-centered technology deal, nevertheless, broach the topic of AI rules outright—not like earlier multilateral agreements equivalent to the European Union’s AI Act or earlier Group of Seven (G7) declarations on “safe, secure, and trustworthy” AI innovation.
Instead, the APEC AI Initiative goals to harness the “transformative potential of AI,” whereas “acknowledging member economies’ different approaches to their respective AI policies.” Moreover, the US-South Korea technology deal marks a bilateral restructuring of their shared AI growth agenda, which is now targeted primarily on pro-innovation insurance policies in alignment with Trump’s home AI agenda.
The street forward
South Korea’s internet hosting of the APEC Summit demonstrated profitable management as a worldwide convener, advancing US allies’ and companions’ engagement in the Indo-Pacific area and past.
By leveraging the discussion board’s multilateral platform, Seoul secured important trade and technology outcomes, together with expanded semiconductor provide chain partnerships, multilateral and bilateral frameworks on AI innovation, and joint initiatives to speed up low-carbon power initiatives and digital innovation. These outcomes bolstered South Korea’s strategic positioning as a practical chief in shaping international technology norms and advancing financial resilience throughout the Indo-Pacific area.
Following the summit, nevertheless, the tougher process shall be to make sure profitable implementation of the US-South Korea trade and technology offers. The two nations’ deepening cooperation on important and rising applied sciences affords a chance for them to strategically calibrate shared science and technology coverage, which ought to be anchored in a mutually helpful dedication to safe, clear, and sustainable innovation ecosystems. As Washington and Seoul search to combine science and technology diplomacy into their broader financial safety agendas, the sturdiness of those frameworks will rely on the continued alignment of their coverage priorities, public-private partnerships, and institutional cooperation.
Looking towards the way forward for US-South Korea relations, the outcomes from this yr’s APEC summit sign a constructive trajectory for bilateral strategic science and technology engagement—one which goals to boost strategic competitiveness in an more and more complicated geoeconomic and technological panorama.
Kayla T. Orta is a nonresident fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
Further studying
Image: October 29, 2025, Gyeongju, Gyeongbuk, SOUTH KOREA: Oct 29, 2025, Gyeongju, South Korea-South Korean President Lee Jae Myung (R) and US President Donald Trump (L) shake arms forward of their talks at the National Museum in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, southeastern South Korea, 29 October 2025. Credit Image: © Apec2025korea through ZUMA Press Wire.