The 20th Jeju Forum 2025
Jeju, South Korea, 28-30 May 2025
(Dr. Ai’s Presentation)
Jeju City: On May 29, 2025, at Jeju City, South Korea, Dr. Songheang Ai, director of SEAMEO TED participated the 20th Jeju Forum 2025 to address the theme “Harnessing Innovation for Peace and Prosperity”. During the forum, Dr. Ai presented the session on “Bridging the Digital Education Divide in Asia through and AI Educational Platform” sharing with over 200 participants.
(Participants Listening to Dr. Ai’s Presentation)
As one of Asia-Pacific’s most influential regional dialogue platforms, the Forum focuses on peace, regional cooperation, and sustainable development. He highlighted some challenges in terms of internet access in some Asian primary schools (around 40%), and application gap in educational technologies. Teacher training and education systems are uneven. Some educators are unprepared to adopt AI in their instructional practices.
(Speakers and Moderator)
Dr. Ai raised some recommendations to address some AI-related challenges. For example, promoting mobile broadband connectivity, offline digital resources, and solar-powered energy, device-lending programs, used device distribution, teacher capacity-building program, encouraging cross-border cooperation in policy, resources and training system, etc.
The innovative model of educational cooperation to bridge digital divide was proposed consisting of schools as the knowledge and innovation repository, industries as real-world data source, and government as regulatory authority to harmoniously work for an inclusive growth. The future-oriented education framework should be micro-credential development, curriculum innovation, quality assurance, cyber security, data privacy, AI ethics, and administrative efficiency.
Along with the forum, Dr. Sung-Hun Kim as the president of Cheju Halla University who was a host of the session, was committed to realize cooperation with SEAMEO TED after signing MoU in March 2025 by providing scholarship programs for ASEAN students to study at Cheju Halla University for the spring intake 2025 and co-hosting the 2nd AI and digital education training workshop in early December 2025.
(Group Photo of all speakers and Dr. Sung-Hun Kim)