Visitors walk past welcome signs for the APEC 2025 summit at Gimhae International Airport in the southeastern city of Busan on Oct. 22, 2025. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — Next week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit will turn the quiet, temple-dotted city of Gyeongju into a theater of global power politics. South Korea, long wedged between the gravitational pulls of Washington and Beijing, suddenly finds itself not as an observer, but as host—and potential broker—of an uneasy regional order.
For two days, leaders from 21 Pacific economies will converge on this ancient capital, including U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose rare simultaneous visits to Seoul will underscore both the promise and the peril of Asia’s economic interdependence.
The meeting, which represents economies accounting for over half the world’s trade, will unfold against a backdrop of rising protectionism, faltering supply chains, and a widening ideological rift. At its center is President Lee Jae Myung, whose government hopes to thread the needle between two increasingly rival superpowers.
Lee’s schedule tells the story of Seoul’s delicate dance: a Wednesday summit with Trump to push forward a long-delayed trade deal that could lower U.S. tariffs on Korean goods in exchange for a $350 billion investment pledge—and, days later, a meeting with Xi to reaffirm the fragile calm in Seoul-Beijing relations.
This composite photo, created using pictures released by the AP and EPA news agencies, shows U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Yonhap)
The diplomatic choreography is fraught. South Korean negotiators have been shuttling between Washington and Seoul in recent weeks, trying to bridge “significant gaps” in tariff talks that have eluded resolution. Should the deal materialize during the summit, it would not only reshape trade flows but also serve as the symbolic capstone of Seoul’s pivot toward a more assertive economic diplomacy.
Lee’s engagement with Xi, by contrast, will be more about tone than transaction. With North Korea deepening its military and political ties with Beijing, Seoul will seek reassurances that China remains at least a neutral force in regional security—and, ideally, a partner in reviving the long-stalled peace talks on the peninsula.
The APEC forum, founded on the optimism of globalization, now arrives in an era defined by its retreat. Consensus declarations—once filled with boilerplate pledges to free trade and open markets—have in recent years become battlegrounds over phrasing, often hinging on whether the phrase “rules-based multilateral trading system” can survive the edits of member states.
President Lee Jae Myung (L) holds summit talks with U.S. President Donald Trump at the Oval Office in the White House in Washington on Aug. 25, 2025. (Yonhap)
Few expect this year’s gathering to break that pattern. Still, for Lee and for South Korea, the symbolism matters: the image of leaders convening, however uneasily, to debate the shape of an unstable order.
And somewhere on the margins of that gathering, an unspoken question lingers—the possibility, however remote, of another encounter between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Lee, in a recent interview, called such a meeting unlikely but “worth hoping for,” a reminder that diplomacy in this region often runs on improbable turns.
For now, Gyeongju will play host to history once again, as it has for centuries—where ancient kings once ruled, and where today’s powers will gather, searching for a balance that keeps the peace, at least for one more year.
This photo shows the Gyeongju Hwabaek Convention Center, the main venue for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit set for Oct. 31-Nov. 1 in the southeastern city of Gyeongju, South Korea. (Yonhap)
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
