This event is a special session of the 5th World Smart City Expo (WSCE), Korea's largest international exposition on smart city hosted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) and the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) and sponsored by the Presidential Committee on New Southern Policy. Given the COVID-19 situation, the session was held in a hybrid on-line and off-line format with minimum off-line attendance and the on-line participation of overseas speakers and the general audience.

Under the theme of “Cooperation Plan for the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) through ODA,” the forum brought together Korean and global smart city experts from the public and private sectors, including officials from government agencies, research institutes, and international organizations, where they shared the trend of global cooperation on smart cities among ASEAN countries and discussed measures to implement the cooperation plan for smart city development through ODA.

The forum kicked off with congratulatory remarks by Hyun Soo Kang, president of KRIHS; Byung-Hwa An, deputy secretary general of the Presidential Committee on New Southern Policy; and Nazri Haji Yusof, permanent secretary of the Brunei Ministry of Transport and Infocommunications(MTIC), followed by topic presentations given by three smart city experts from Thailand and Korea, and a panel discussion by six experts from home and abroad.

In the topic presentation session, global trends and examples of ASEAN smart cities were presented by three speakers on different topics: Non A, senior expert in smart city promotion at Thailand's Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA), on "ASEAN Smart City Developmentand Global Cooperation Trajectory"; Seolah Bang, associate research fellow of KRIHS, on "ASEAN-Korea Smart City Development Cooperation Plan"; and In Hyun Jeon, general manager at the Korea Land and Housing Corporation(LH), on "Funding Models for Smart City Development: ODA and Joint-venture Investment."

After the presentations, Sang Keon Lee, director of the Global Development Partnership Center, moderated a panel discussion with Melinda Martinus, lead researcher at the National University of Singapore; Myounggu Kang, professor at the University of Seoul; Eunbyul Cho, programmanager at WeGO; Miyoung Seo, deputy director at the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), and Seoung-Su Kim, director at the Presidential Committeeon New Southern Policy. The panelists actively discussed the importance of smart cities in ASEAN development cooperation, Vietnam's smart city ODA program, and the role of international organizations like WeGO and governments' policy support for smart city cooperation.

In the face of the growing demand for ASEAN-Korea cooperation in smart city development, this forum provided a meaningful opportunity to discuss cooperation and policy support across sectors, including governments, cities, businesses, and research, and to share diverse ways of cooperation with ASEAN for smart city development. The VOD of the forum will be uploaded on the official YouTube channel of the Korea Research Institute forHuman Settlements.