2024 THEME

SDF2024

Rewriting the Strategies for Survival in an Age of Division and Extinction

An increasingly shuttered world
An industrial landscape in the throes of change

2024 is slated to be a “super-year” of elections, where half the world’s population will be heading to the polls. amid a decline in international cooperation and a retreat from globalization, countries are doubling down on neo-protectionist efforts to maximize their national economic and security interests by asserting technological and data sovereignty. Amidst a continuous series of wars and conflicts, uncertainty has become the norm. The rise of AI and the growing push towards greening the economy ahead of the looming climate crisis also signal inevitable and seismic shifts for the industrial landscape and the future of jobs.

Korea, a society divided by conflict and contempt and at risk of extinction

Conflicts rooted in ideological, generational, and socioeconomic differences are fueling division and contempt, creating an increasingly fragmented society bitterly at odds with itself. In the resulting mood of general insecurity, young Koreans are no longer interested in getting married or having children. Coupled with the continuing concentration of people into cities, this trend is driving an alarming population decline and rural depopulation that may very well push the country to the brink of crisis.

20 years strong, SBS D Forum explores the conditions for survival!

The year 2024 marks 20 years since SBS D Forum was first launched in 2004 as the Seoul Digital Forum and later merged with the Future Korea Report to become the platform we know today. SDF2024 will be an opportunity to engage in examining the conditions for sustainable survival – the differences that enable parts of our world to endure while others cease to be – as we have come to understand them over two decades of bearing witness to unrelenting tides of change and efforts to adapt to such change across Korean society. We hope you will join us as we seek answers on how to survive in a fragmented world and pool our collective wisdom to write a new story for our times.