Speaking at the Korea-China Parliamentary Association’s first 2026 policy seminar at the National Assembly Members’ Office Building, Chey said South Korea “must no longer remain a country that simply follows rules between the United States and China.” He argued that keeping influence in the rivalry will require strengthening technological competitiveness while also expanding the country’s economic reach.
Chey described U.S.-China tensions as structural and unlikely to end quickly. “The U.S.-China hegemonic competition is highly likely to continue for decades,” he said, adding that South Korea should “coolly” assess whether it has enough strength to defend itself.
As a practical alternative, he proposed strategic cooperation with Japan. “Japan has an industrial structure similar to ours and is a country with which we can share interests,” he said. “Beyond simple cooperation, we need solidarity at a level that is recognized from the outside as a single economic bloc.”
He said combining the gross domestic product of South Korea and Japan would total about $6 trillion, or roughly one-third of China’s economy. At that scale, he said, the United States and China “would have no choice but to take it seriously.”
Chey said stronger Korea-Japan ties could reshape the broader Asian order. He said that if the partnership deepens, Asian countries excluding China could be drawn toward joining an economic bloc centered on the two nations. Over the long term, he said, an “Asian-style community model” similar to the European Union could also be considered.
Chey also listed key competitive factors in the AI era as capital, electricity, GPUs (graphics processing units) and memory, and stressed the need for investment to secure large-scale data centers and energy infrastructure.
“To do AI well, you need the ability to produce AI, but South Korea currently does not have a great AI data center,” he said. To overcome that, he said, building 1 gigawatt would require about $50 billion in investment.
As a strategy for success in the AI technology supremacy era, Chey cited “speed, scale and security.” He said products should be built quickly even if imperfect to attract users, and that a minimum scale must be secured. To do that, he said, it is necessary to follow the strategy of Nvidia, which currently leads the AI industry ecosystem.
The Korea-China Parliamentary Association is a bipartisan parliamentary diplomacy platform made up of 145 lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties. It has continued policy discussions through seminars and parliamentary diplomacy across areas including foreign affairs, the economy, advanced industries and culture.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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