2022 was a big year for the K.E.Y. Platform. It was the 10th anniversary year of K.E.Y. Platform, which has continuously delivered innovation insights to Korea without a break since its beginning in 2013.

We could have held a grand event for the 10th anniversary, but unfortunately, the world was still struggling under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. By the time when the event was held in April 2022, people started to become insensitive to risk, with fatigue building up after more than two years of pandemic, but we could not let the tension go, with tens of thousands of confirmed cases being reported every day. Earlier in 2020 and 2021 when the pandemic was raging, the K.E.Y. Platform held events safely and successfully, setting an example for how conferences should be held in the midst of the pandemic. Despite the knowhow that we had, we did not let our guard down or become big-headed about it, but continued to put priority on safety and played it safe when preparing for the event.

It does not mean that K.E.Y. Platform celebrated its 10th anniversary without showcasing any innovation. The K.E.Y. Platform lived up to its reputation as Korea's leading innovation platform: it used the Metaverse, a technology that the world is paying attention to, to showcase what a future conference would look like. With themes and insights penetrating the times, the Plenary Session, which is considered the essence of the K.E.Y. Platform, was replicated in the virtual space, providing new experiences to the audience.

At the Preconference Event, a forum was arranged to explore new opportunities in the Metaverse world with global influencers who were playing active roles as main players of surrogate economy on YouTube and social media channels.

The theme of the Plenary Session was “Complication of Geopolitical Risks: The Great Shift of the Axis”. Once again, a global scenario was presented – a card that the K.E.Y. Platform is proud to draw. The “2018 Global Scenario” unveiled at the first K.E.Y. Platform Conference was a product of mobilizing all the reporting capabilities of MoneyToday. It was highly praised for its accuracy and depth, playing a great role in establishing the K.E.Y. Platform as Korea's leading global conference.

After that, the K.E.Y. Platform concluded that penetrating insights into the rapidly changing times cannot be developed only from mid- to long-term forecasts and predictions. Based on this judgment, a report titled Pandemonium 2020 was released in 2017 to look once again into the global society living in an age of turbulent changes and propose right responses and strategies.

One of the reasons for presenting a global scenario again last year was, of course, that it was a year of special significance for the K.E.Y. Platform, marking the 10th anniversary of its establishment, but it was also because the world was going through a time of complexity and uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic dragged on, and the power struggle between the United States and China not only continued but also intensified even after the inauguration of the Biden Administration. Global supply chains collapsed rapidly, and things went from bad to worse when Russia eventually launched an invasion of the Ukraine, despite concerns and warnings from around the world.

On the domestic front, the newly-inaugurated government of the Republic of Korea was faced with the challenge of having to solve so many problems from the start. To fulfill its role as part of the Korean press, MoneyToday delivered a presentation on how to view and respond to current global issues at the Plenary Session. The presentation was produced by putting together all the experiences and capabilities that we have accumulated over 20 years.

In the special sessions designed to address in-depth topics in each field, we looked at how to prepare for the future in more detail.

Special Session 1 was held under the theme of “Next Five Years will Determine the Future of Korea’s Science and Technology” to address the agenda of promising future technologies and global technologies with Korea's leading national research institutes.

Special Session 2 dealt with one of the most pressing issues facing Korea right now: the population problem. Under the theme of “Birth of ‘New’ Old People,” we tried to figure out how to accept the reality of an aging society and explore how to create opportunities around it.

At the Plenary Session 2 on the following day, we examined K-Diaspora 4.0, a new model for going global from the perspective of the session theme, "Advances of K-Unicorns," assessed Korea's competitiveness in the biotech market, which was opened wider in the wake of the pandemic and tried to predict the future of Korean startups.

Special Session 3 focused on agricultural technology (AgTech) and food technology, which would emerge as Korea’s next-generation growth engines on the strength of its world-class technological prowess. As the world stood at a turning point that would lead to a digital economy, we looked into diverse case stories to understand what challenges we should take to innovate the agriculture and food industries and how they could be combined with Korea’s world-class digital technologies to create synergies.

Last year, we were well into the third year of the pandemic, but the K.E.Y. Platform Conference was brought to a successful completion by enforcing disease prevention measures thoroughly.