SDF

Korea is in the front line of the fertility crisis of the developed world. Success in resolving it would be of global, not just national significance. Conventional measures have not worked well. Korea’s economy is world leading but social change has not kept pace. There are obvious problems in the relation between the sexes, the position of women and choices relating to work, marriage and family. These affect the attraction of marriage and the chances of children. Resolving that would need a change in culture and maybe redefining what it is to be Korean. That will be difficult and painful.

In May 2014, the Japan Policy Council, a private think tank, shocked the nation by publishing a list of Japanese “cities at risk of extinction” that included roughly half of the country’s municipalities. Ten years later, in January of this year, the Population Strategy Council of Japan, a group of population experts, proposed “Population Vision 2100,” a population strategy based on an examination of population measures taken to date and the current status of Japan’s population. In April, the Population Strategy Council released a report on the sustainability of the country’s municipalities based on an analysis of recent population trends, once again calling attention to the importance of the population issue within Japanese society. This session will offer analysis and commentary on Japan’s present population problem delivered firsthand by the former Chairman of the Japan Policy Council and Vice Chair of the Population Strategy Council of Japan, who was responsible for writing the reports put out by both of these bodies. He will share ideas and real-life examples as he explores a range of measures to address population decline, including not only measures to address population decline due to natural factors (decline in births) and social factors (depopulation) but also alternative approaches.

Korea’s population problem threatens to reach new extremes as overconcentration in Seoul continues and provincial areas grapple with the existential threat of depopulation. What kinds of solutions are possible? Cho Youngtae, Director of the Seoul National University Population Policy Research Center, moderates this session with David Coleman, the world’s foremost demographer, and Hiroya Masuda, Japan’s most prominent population expert, discussing how Korea might go about solving its population problem.

The results of the U.S. presidential elections are expected to once again reshape the global order. The conflicts in the Middle East and the South China Sea show no signs of letting up, and the rivalry between the United States and China for technological dominance and economic security continues. For a trading power like Korea, such instability in global affairs exacts a heavy toll, both politically and economically. This is why a proactive response strategy is needed that can further Korea’s national interests as well as global economic prosperity. The primary condition for sustainable economic prosperity is technological capabilities, as well as the human talent who possess and can exercise such capabilities. Yet for Korea, the reality is that the total population has been on a downward trajectory since 2015, with the very industrial infrastructure of the country’s second-largest city Busan at risk of collapsing due to an emptying out of the city’s young population. In order to transition to cutting-edge strategic industries such as AI and secondary batteries, measures to allow for inflow of foreigners, including through immigration, can no longer be deferred. If we are to ensure a prosperous future for our increasingly shrinking society, we must begin the work of uncovering the conditions that make a country attractive.

Korea has become a country at risk of extinction, due to population decline driven by ultra-low birth rates on the one hand and regional imbalances stemming from an overconcentration of the population in the greater Seoul metropolitan area on the other. We have entered an era where ultra-low birth rates could fundamentally destabilize Korea’s industrial and demographic structure. As an emerging power within the international community, what must Korea do to overcome this crisis and not lose its competitiveness? This session will look at the government’s response to the strategies for national survival put forward by the joint research teams.

KIM Suntae, also known as “Chungju Man,” is probably the most famous public servant in Korea today, with his YouTube channel recording an average one million views per video, not to mention over 1,000 comments, and ranking first among all local government YouTube channels. He humbly gives the credit for his success to the Chungju mayor, saying, “I was just doing what I was told.” But he didn’t become an acclaimed PR genius without first engaging in a lot of thoughtful deliberation. “Whether it’s attracting tourists or investment, the first step is getting people to come here in the first place. It was an attempt made out of desperation.” The second biggest city in Chungcheongbuk-do Province, Chungju was officially categorized as being at risk for extinction in 2022. When compared with other countries, Chungju’s situation might seem less severe, but it faces the same threat of depopulation as other small-to-mid-sized cities outside the metropolitan area. Kim Suntae has made a name for himself, but his journey to his current success began with the simple desire to contribute in a meaningful way to the place he calls home. In this session, we will hear his story, including the struggles and the challenges, as well as the insights he gained along the way.

* Join us for a special Q&A time with our speaker after this session.

PD Lee Kunbyol, creator of the SBS program Paldo Jumugwan, and “Gen Z village head” Kim Yusol, who left Seoul and headed south to start a new life in Wando, look at the population policies of local municipalities and their impact to date.

* Join us for a special Q&A time with our speaker after this session.

On the 20th anniversary of SDF, the singer Younha is marking her “second 20th” birthday. In her latest album, titled Growth Theory, she asks, “Why on earth must humans grow?” Her search for the answer takes her to a mangrove forest in Australia, where she meets a sunfish. Sunfish are often associated with weakness and mental fragility, yet they are remarkably resilient, living for over 20 years once they reach adulthood. Human life is not so different. If we are to live together, we have to put in the tiring work of learning to live with one another’s differences; if we are to grow, we must endure the toil of breaking through our limits. Yet, in the same way that diamonds can be fashioned only by other diamonds, we, too, require each other’s strength. Even if the definition of what it means to live “together” has changed with time, Younha relays the message through her music that it is our collective strength that will ensure our survival into the future.

The low birth rate problem presently driving Korea to extinction is not simply about how many children are being born. It is a much deeper and fundamental problem that concerns how Koreans live their lives, how we relate to one another, and to what we ascribe value and significance. In this context, in-depth interviews were conducted with approximately 100 people on questions like how healthy we are in our individual lives and as a society, where we should be headed as a society, what values we should have in common, and how we can turn our vision for society into reality. This session offers a picture, based on the input of ordinary people like you and me, of the new hope we must build and the new story we must work towards as a society.

* Join us for a special Q&A time with our speaker after this session.

This is a story of young people who lived in isolation, feeling as if they have been forced to give up on their lives. Some said it was wishful thinking to expect they would be able to emerge from the rooms they had for so long refused to leave and live their lives fully once again. But these young people now live in one house, cooking and eating together, and finding the strength in community to break free of their isolation and live lives that are marked by both self-reliance and solidarity. The new possibilities these young people have shown us inspire new hope for not only the 540,000 young people in Korea currently living in isolation but also for Korean society as a whole, suffering as it is today under the strain of hyperindividualism and disconnection. It is time for us to learn what we must do as a society to realize and expand on the possibilities demonstrated to us by this community of isolated youths.

* Join us for a special Q&A time with our speaker after this session.

K-pop emerged amid the ongoing evolution of Korean popular music as a genre that fused Western music and traditional Korean music, a combination that eventually attracted global attention beginning in the 2000s. Today, new technology like AI is ushering in significant changes to how K-pop is created and produced, signaling an impending paradigm shift for the music industry as a whole. In particular, AI has the potential to not only enable greater efficiency in the creative process but also, in synthesis with uniquely human creativity, drive the creation of more innovative content. While such advances in technology will not replace human creators altogether, efforts to facilitate collaboration between the human imagination and AI in tandem with such advances will become increasingly critical. This session looks at how the convergence between AI and music is poised to expand the bounds of music globally and fuel groundbreaking innovations in culture.

* A special Q&A time with the speaker will take place during this session.

Every year, the American business magazine Fortune announces its list of the top 500 global companies. If this list is any indication, no company is eternal. Over just the last fifty years, many companies who were once the highest-valued in the Fortune rankings have been pushed off the list, with some even going bankrupt. Meanwhile, of the countless startups that are born everyday around the world, less than 50% survive beyond their fifth year. In short, the majority of companies that are started eventually die. Observing the rise and fall of companies, we are prompted to consider what characteristics or criteria determine whether a company survives or disappears. Take this line of questioning further, and we can ask, what characteristics do “ultra-survival” companies, who have survived for hundreds of years, have in common? Traditionally, such questions have been explored mostly in the fields of business administration or economics. But there are new insights and findings to be gained concerning these questions in the four-billion-year history of life, and the mechanisms of survival and annihilation observable throughout. This is because there is sufficient evidence to suggest that these two worlds (the world of biology and the world of companies) operate on the same principles of evolution. In this context, this session focuses on differences on “evolvability” as manifested over four billion years of life on earth to discover what attributes enable a company to have high evolvability and thereby continue in a state of ultra-survival. What organizational structures and technology systems show high evolvability, and what kinds of laws, regulations, leadership, and philosophy can strengthen a company’s evolvability?

Professor Jang Dayk moderates this Q&A session with Google Korea Country Director Harrison Kim and Sopoong Ventures Partner Choi Kyunghee on survival strategies for sustainable companies.

The bee colony, that quintessential “superorganism” whereby different organisms of the same species interact together as if they were one single organism, adheres to a sophisticated division of labor based on the age of worker bees. Are there insights we can gain from bee colonies, so often compared to human societies, in the strategies they adopt to maximize survival and sustainability, as we look for strategies to solve our own problems of division and extinction? This session aims to approach the problems of generational conflict and population aging we face today through the lens of the bee colony. In particular, it will examine the strategy of elderly worker bees, who as they get older do more of the foraging for the colony, taking responsibility for supplying energy to the colony, and the implications for our own aging societies. While being cognizant that human societies differ from bee colonies in not only complexity but also in the cultural values and convictions that make us who we are, this session will shed light on opportunities to apply the survival strategies of bee colonies to our own societies.

* Join us for a special Q&A time with our speaker after this session.

In the 21st century, the leaders of the present generation, and the leaders to come of the next generation, will determine the fate of our species ？ including, perhaps, whether there will even be humans in future centuries, and if there are, how hospitable the planet will be, not only to our species, but to all other species on this planet as well. Because of this truly awesome responsibility, we face more demanding ethical choices than any previous generation ？ choices about everyday living, such as how we generate our energy, and what we eat. It is as if friends have asked us to look after their house while we are away: will we throw a huge party, not caring if the house gets wrecked, or will we be responsible stewards, taking care to return the house to our friends in a condition as good as, or better than, the one in which we received it? In the real world, the “friends” include not only the next generation, but all future generations, and not only humans, but all sentient beings. That is why our ethics must expand to include all those affected by our choices.

* Join us for a special Q&A time with our speaker after this session.