Summary: BTS RM’s Address at the APEC CEO Summit 2025
RM made history speaking at the APEC CEO Summit 2025 in Seoul.
The BTS leader took the spotlight as the first K-pop artist invited to speak at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. This year, the cultural industry got official recognition as a key agenda.
RM delivered a heartfelt keynote during the session on “Cultural and Creative Industries in the APEC Region and the Soft Power of K-Culture.”
He opened by greeting world leaders with humility and pride in representing Korea. Describing K-pop as “a bridge that connects worlds,” RM talked about how the genre unites people through creativity and emotion.
The BTS leader recalled the tough early days when Korean music barely crossed borders.
“So today I want to speak to you as a creator and an artist. I want to share my thoughts on how K-Pop crossed borders to move the hearts of people. It’s not something we can really calculate or measure. It’s a bridge that connects worlds and I want to bring your attention to how we can work together to build this connection for tomorrow’s creative cultural eco-system.
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BTS first started to go outside Korea about 10 years ago. And back then, we didn’t dream of what we see today. Nothing was like this.
Did you ever turn on your TV or radio and hear a song that’s not in your language or in English? Probably not very often, right?
I felt how hard it is to ever hear a Korean song in an English-speaking country.
I saw how high a cultural barrier could be.”
– RM
RM compared K-pop’s mix of sounds and culture to bibimbap, Korea’s famous mixed-rice dish, saying the genre blends different elements while keeping Korean identity.
“I like to compare K-pop music to bibimbap and bibimbap is a traditional Korean dish. You taste rice and sauce, which is rice, and you put all kinds of vegetables, meat, flavourings on top and mix it all up and that’s the bibimbap. And K-Pop is much the same. You take Korea’s unique aesthetics, emotions and production systems but you don’t turn away elements of western music like hip-hop, R&B or EDM. Just like bibimbap, these parts all keep their unique identities but mix together to make something new, and fresh and delightful.
K-Pop is not just a genre of music. It is a 360 degree total package of music, dance, performance, visual style, story-telling, music video and even social media. K-Pop success didn’t happen because one single culture was better.”
– RM
He closed by urging leaders to treat culture and creativity with the same importance as economics. RM promised to keep spreading “messages of courage, hope, and unity” through his music.
Watch his full speech here:
