KIM Yoosuk is President of the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies and the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies, and also serves as Executive Vice President of SK Inc. Previously, he held senior leadership roles across the SK Group, including CFO at SK On, Head of Battery Marketing at SK Innovation, Head of Planning & Strategy at SK Energy, and Head of Planning at SK China. He also served as Director responsible for LNG and renewable energy at BP and worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. Earlier in his career, he served as a diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including roles in the Foreign Policy Division and the Protocol Division of the Office of the President. He earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Seoul National University and an M.B.A. from Yale University.

CHEY Tae-won is Chairman of the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies and Chairman and CEO of SK Group, a multi-sector innovation group with nearly 150 affiliates spanning energy, ICT, semiconductors, and bio industries. He also serves as Chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), Korea’s largest business organization, representing over 190,000 member companies. Under his leadership, KCCI plays a key role in trade promotion, economic diplomacy, and advancement of international cooperation. In 2025, he chaired the APEC CEO Summit held in Korea.

Chuck HAGEL served as the 24th Secretary of Defense for the United States from 2013 to 2015 and Co-Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board from 2009 to 2013. Secretary Hagel’s current commitments include service on the Board of Trustees of RAND, Centennial Scholar at the Georgetown Walsh School of Foreign Service, Distinguished Statesman at the Atlantic Council, Chairman of the Veteran’s Justice Commission, Board of Governors of PBS, and Board of Visitors of West Point U.S. Military Academy. Secretary Hagel also served two terms in the United States Senate, representing the state of Nebraska, during which he was a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. He is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

KANG Kyung-wha is Korean Ambassador to the U.S., a position she assumed in October 2025. She previously served as Korea’s first female Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2017 to 2021 under President Moon Jae-in, and as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Asia Society in New York from 2024 to 2025. Her distinguished United Nations career includes serving as Senior Advisor on Policy to the 9th Secretary-General, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and Deputy High Commissioner at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). She also served as Director-General for International Organizations at Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in International/Intercultural Communication from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from Yonsei University.

YAMADA Shigeo (virtual) is Japanese Ambassador to the United States, a position he assumed in December 2023. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1986. Prior to his current role, he served as Political Director for Japan’s 2023 G7 Presidency and as Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs for Foreign Policy, where he played a key role in the G7 Summit in Hiroshima and the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Nagano. He also held positions as Deputy Director-General for North American Affairs Bureau, Director for Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, and Director for the Status of U.S. Forces Agreement. He holds a B.A. in law from Keio University and a B.A. in political science from Carleton College.

Bill Hagerty (virtual) is a United States Senator from Tennessee. He currently serves on the Senate Committees on Foreign Relations; Appropriations; Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; and Rules and Administration. Prior to his election to the Senate, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 2017 to 2019. He previously served as the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development and as a member of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President George H.W. Bush. He holds a J.D. from Vanderbilt University and a B.A. in economics and business administration from Vanderbilt University.

WI Sung Lac (virtual) is the Director of National Security of the Republic of Korea. Prior to this role, he served as a Member of the National Assembly. A veteran career diplomat with 36 years of service, he has held numerous senior positions, including Ambassador to Russia and Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, a position easily known as the Chief Negotiator for the Six-Party Talks. Following his initial retirement from government service, he taught International Relations at Seoul National University and the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, and served as Secretary-General of the Korea Peace Foundation. He holds a B.A. in International Relations from Seoul National University.

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Kurt CAMPBELL is Chairman and Co-founder of The Asia Group, a strategic advisory and capital management group. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. Previously, he was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as the 22nd Deputy Secretary of State in 2024. Prior to his role as Deputy Secretary, Campbell served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs at the NSC, and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He is a former CEO and Co-Founder of the Center for a New American Society and concurrently served as the Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and Chairman of the Editorial Board of The Washington Quarterly. He received his Ph.D. in international relations from Brasenose College at Oxford University and B.A. from the University of California, San Diego.

Victor CHA is President of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department, and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Dr. Cha is also a Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Government at Georgetown University. He previously served on the Defense Policy Board for the Biden administration and on the National Security Council for the George W. Bush administration. He received his Ph.D., MIA, and B.A. in political science from Columbia University and a B.A. with honors from Oxford University.

CHUN Chaesung is Professor at Seoul National University and President of the East Asia Institute (EAI). He previously served as President of the Korean Association of International Studies, Director of the Center for International Studies at Seoul National University, and Vice President of the Institute of Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. He has been a visiting professor at Keio University in Tokyo and has served on advisory committees for the Ministry of Unification, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense, and the Republic of Korea Army and Navy. He earned his Ph.D. in International Relations Theory from Northwestern University, and his B.A. and M.A. from Seoul National University.

G. John IKENBERRY is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, with appointments in the Department of Politics and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He is also a Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He previously served as a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College and the 72nd Eastman Visiting Professor at Balliol College, University of Oxford. His recent books include Rethinking the 1990s: Liberal World Order Building in the Aftermath of the Cold War (Oxford, 2025); Debating Worlds: Contested Narratives of Global Modernity and World Order (Oxford, 2023); and A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism in the Making of Modern World Order (Yale, 2020).

Seth G. JONES is president of the Defense and Security Department and Harold Brown Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He also serves as a Commissioner on the U.S. Congressional Afghanistan War Commission and teaches at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Prior to CSIS, Dr. Jones was director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation. Before that, he served in numerous positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and U.S. Special Operations Command. He is author of several books, including The American Edge: The Military Tech Nexus and the Sources of Great Power Dominance (Oxford University Press, 2025), Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran, and the Rise of Irregular Warfare (W.W. Norton, 2021), and In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan (W.W. Norton, 2009). Dr. Jones has published articles in a range of journals, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and International Security, and news outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College and received his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago.

MORI Takeo is Advisor to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan. Prior to this role, he had a distinguished 40-year career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, culminating as Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs. His overseas postings included the Japanese Embassies in Germany, Singapore, and Washington, D.C.

SUZUKI Kazuto is Professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo and Director of the Institute of Geoeconomics at the International House of Japan (IHJ). He has worked at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique in Paris, France as an assistant and served as Professor of International Politics at Hokkaido University until 2020. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex and is a graduate of Ritsumeikan University.

Stephen M. WALT Stephen M. WALT is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine and a member of the board of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 2005 and a recipient of the International Studies Association’s Distinguished Senior Scholar award. His books include The Origins of Alliances, which received the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award, and The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (2018), a New York Times best-seller. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University.

KIM Yoon is President and Chief Strategy Officer of TwelveLabs, an AI startup based in San Francisco and Seoul building foundation models for video understanding. Prior to this role, he was a Partner at Saehan Ventures, responsible for global investment of deep tech startups in AI and the metaverse. Before his role at Saehan Ventures, he served as CTO at SK Telecom, leading R&D and innovations in AI and 5G for hyperconnected intelligence applications in security, data analytics, media, cloud, and new mobility. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

CHOI Yejin is the Dieter Schwarz Foundation Professor and Senior Fellow at Stanford\'s Computer Science and Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI). She is a MacArthur Fellow, AI2050 Senior Fellow, and was named to Time100 Most Influential People in AI (2023, 2025). Choi has received 2 Test-of-Time Awards and 10 Best/Outstanding Paper Awards at top AI conferences. She was a main stage speaker at TED 2023 and has delivered keynotes at several AI conferences including NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR, ACL, and AAAI. Her research focuses on democratizing generative AI through smaller yet powerful language models, scaling intelligence via smarter algorithms, pluralistic alignment, and AI for science and social good. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Cornell University and BS in Computer Engineering at Seoul National University in Korea.

Ylli BAJRAKTARI is President and CEO of the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP). Prior to launching SCSP, he served as Executive Director of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and as Chief of Staff to National Security Advisor LTG H.R. McMaster. he held leadership roles under the Deputy Secretary of Defense and served as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey. He joined the Department of Defense in 2010, serving in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy as Country Director for Afghanistan and later India. He holds an M.A. from Harvard University and a B.A. from George Washington University.

Nicholas BRAMBLE is Director of Trade and Economic Policy at Google. Previously, he served as Senior Counsel at Google, where he handled global trade and competitiveness issues. He previously was the lead for search and cloud policy issues on Google\\\'s trust & safety team. Prior to Google, Mr. Bramble was a Presidential Innovation Fellow with the U.S. Treasury Department, and served as a lecturer at Yale Law School and director of the Yale Law and Media Program. He has filed two amicus briefs on technology issues with the Supreme Court and published articles on telecom, copyright, and content regulation in the Hastings Law Journal, Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review, and Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. Mr. Bramble holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and B.A. and M.A. degrees from Stanford University.

YANASE Tadao is Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Business Development Officer of NTT, Inc., where he leads business strategy and is also responsible for economic security. He previously served as Vice-Minister for International Affairs at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), as Executive Secretary to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Prime Minister Taro Aso, and as Director-General of METI’s Economic and Industrial Policy Bureau and Cabinet Secretariat. He is a graduate of the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Law and holds an M.A. in Economics from Yale University.

YU Kyungsang is the Head of AI CIC (Company-in-company) at SK Telecom. Prior to assuming this position in October 2025, he served as the Chief Strategy Officer at SK Telecom. His extensive leadership experience within the SK Group includes serving as Executive Vice President and Head of the Digital Investment Center at SK Inc. and as Senior Vice President and Technical Advisor at the Chairman’s Office at SK Inc. Earlier in his career, he was the Head of Strategy and Innovation at SK Planet and worked as the Global Product Marketing Lead at Google HQ. He was selected as an Eisenhower Fellow for Artificial Intelligence in 2017. He holds a B.A. in business administration from Yonsei University.

CHA Jiho is a Member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea and Under-Secretary General for Future Strategies of the Democratic Party of Korea. Prior to entering politics, he served as Professor of Future Strategies at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and Professor of Humanitarian Studies at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. His research and policy work focus on global AI transformation in the era of polycrisis, particularly on the conceptualization and design of an AI Universal Basic Society (AI-UBS) framework. He holds a Ph.D. in International Health from Johns Hopkins University, an M.D. from Dong-A University, and an M.Sc. in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford.

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