APEC Revisited: Five Defining Moments from the 2025 Summit in Gyeongju

Behind the formality, five moments defined the meeting — each revealing a different layer of how Asia’s diplomacy, economics, and technology now intersect.

After two months of negotiation following an August framework agreement, Seoul and Washington finally sealed their tariff pact .
South Korea agreed to invest $350 billion in the United States — $200 billion in direct cash and $150 billion through a shipbuilding fund. To cushion the won-dollar shock, the cash tranche will be spread over ten years, capped at $20 billion annually.

In return, U.S. auto tariffs on Korean vehicles will drop from 25% to 15%.
It was a trade-off of numbers and narratives: Korea secures industrial stability, and the U.S. gets liquidity and labor-friendly headlines.

Yet the more symbolic conversation happened off the record.
President Lee asked Trump directly to “authorize nuclear propulsion fuel for Korean submarines.”
Twenty-four hours later, Trump posted on Truth Social :

The announcement not only revived questions about a Northeast Asian nuclear arms spiral , but also repositioned Seoul as a player, not just a partner, in Washington’s Indo-Pacific calculus.

For the first time in six years, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping sat across from each other — at Gimhae Air Base, not the White House.
Their countries had been locked in a tariff war exceeding 100% duties on both sides, and yet, both arrived in Gyeongju needing a pause.

The result: China will suspend its rare-earth export controls for one year , renewable annually.
In exchange, Trump agreed to cut the fentanyl tariff from 20% to 10%.
No joint communiqué was released, but Trump declared the talk “a 12 out of 10.”

For context: China controls roughly 70% of global rare-earth production , and U.S. dependence remains deep. The truce buys time — but also highlights a mutual addiction to rivalry itself.

President Lee’s diplomacy at APEC was a study in pragmatic geometry.
He met Xi Jinping on the final day for a 90-minute session focused on peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. The two leaders agreed to strengthen communication channels and cooperate on North Korea issues — signaling a tentative thaw after the THAAD dispute years earlier.

Just hours before, Lee had also held talks with Japan’s conservative Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi , reaffirming “shuttle diplomacy” and trilateral coordination with Washington.
APEC thus became Lee’s demonstration of “practical diplomacy” : anchor with the U.S. and Japan, but keep the Chinese door open.

If geopolitics played out in Gyeongju, corporate diplomacy happened in Gangnam.
On October 30, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang , Samsung Chairman Jay Y. Lee , and Hyundai Group’s Euisun Chung met at a chicken pub named Kkanbu Chicken — an image that instantly went viral.

The next day, the Korean government and its top conglomerates announced a deal with NVIDIA for the supply of over 260,000 GPUs and broad AI collaboration.
A casual dinner turned into a strategic alliance — one that may define Korea’s next decade of technological competitiveness.

Beyond photo ops, APEC 2025 was about repositioning —
Korea between Washington and Beijing, Asia between protectionism and integration, and corporations between government alliances and AI competition.

More than 1,700 CEOs attended the APEC CEO Summit, the largest ever. But the headlines belonged to transactions , not communiqués.
In Gyeongju, diplomacy looked less like a dance of statesmen and more like a marketplace where power itself was being repriced.

The 2025 APEC Summit revealed an emerging pattern in global governance:
alliances are now built through deals, not doctrines .
From tariffs to technology, from submarines to social optics, every gesture in Gyeongju reflected a single truth —
the future of Asia-Pacific cooperation will depend not on ideology, but on negotiation.