2024 THEME
Rewriting the Strategies for Survival in an Age of Division and Extinction
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.
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.
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.
SDF Invitation
Invitation to the 20th Anniversary of SDF (SBS D Forum)
The keyword at the heart of SDF is “future.” Accordingly, the Seoul Digital Forum was launched in 2004, with the aim to shed light on how the world was changing and translate the discourse on such changes into a broader social agenda. Over the years, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, film director James Cameron, World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and many more participated in the Seoul Digital Forum as speakers.
Alongside the Seoul Digital Forum, SBS also organized the Future Korea Report, which sought solutions for a better future for Korea. Held under the theme “Shock of an Aging Society: Any Way Out?”, the first Future Korea Report was the first such event to highlight the problems of low birth rates and population aging, which are the most pressing issues facing Korean society today. The Future Korea Report made ongoing efforts to drive the national agenda and seek solutions for the same, focusing in 2008 on the climate crisis and its implications for the future of the Korean Peninsula and in 2012 on a “good growth” society and solutions to economic polarization. In 2018, the Seoul Digital Forum and Future Korea Report were combined into the SBS D Forum (SDF).
This year, we celebrate the 20th anniversary of SDF. To mark this milestone, the theme we have chosen for this year’s forum is “Rewriting the Strategies for Survival in an Age of Division and Extinction.” The foremost knowledge partners in the country, including Seoul National University Institute for Future Strategy, Seoul National University Institute for Social Development and Policy Research, Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, Gachon Startup College, and Seoul National University Climate Lab, have partnered with SDF to conduct joint research. Such topics as the implications of the U.S. presidential elections for the direction of South Korea and its national strategy, industrial strategy in an age of declining populations, solutions to rural depopulation and migration, and more will be explored from diverse perspectives, including the state, society, private companies, and the environment.
Unlike similar programs organized by other media companies, SDF is a corporate social responsibility initiative of SBS, and participation is free of charge. You are cordially invited to join us as we examine the questions of how to survive and of how to live together at the present turning point, in the face of many challenges to a sustainable future. I hope we will be able to come together and draw on our collective wisdom to write a new story. I look forward to your participation at SBS D Forum. Thank you.
Moonshin Bang
President & CEO, SBS