We are entering a new inflection point in business communication: information is more abundant than ever, yet trust is increasingly scarce; technology is more powerful than ever, yet cross-cultural understanding is more precious than ever. Young people crave authenticity and empathy, while business decision-makers value certainty that is verifiable and convertible into outcomes. “25-Hour Digital Coast” positions itself between these two worlds—capturing subtle changes across the Asia-Pacific with Gen-Z sensibilities, and using research and business methodologies to turn “feelings” into “evidence” and “good stories” into cooperation-ready growth solutions.

This column does not measure its influence by how “beautiful” its viewpoints are, but by a harder outcome: whether companies can build trust faster, secure cooperation more effectively, and achieve more resilient growth because of narrative. To that end, we continuously build two core assets:

1. APAC Corporate Narrative

We help companies translate their technology, supply chains, products, talent, and values into narrative structures that APAC partners can understand, are willing to engage with, and can implement—so communication not only “moves people,” but also makes things happen.

• Narratives for young audiences: more authentic, more specific, and more scenario-driven; using detail to explain “why it is worth trusting.”
• Narratives for business audiences: clearer metrics, more explicit mechanisms, and more controllable risk boundaries; clarifying “how this drives growth and cooperation,” so real experience and business results appear in the same frame.

2. Narrative advancement aligned with the APEC rhythm: turning the calendar into a growth system

APEC 2025 Korea, under the theme “Building a Sustainable Tomorrow,” focuses on Connect / Innovate / Prosper, emphasizing connectivity, digital innovation, and inclusive growth. APEC 2026 (China Year) will adopt the theme “Building an Asia-Pacific Community to Prosper Together” and set three priorities: Openness / Innovation / Cooperation.

Therefore, “25-Hour Digital Coast” will upgrade the APEC timetable into a company’s content timetable and cooperation timetable:

• APEC Rhythm Radar: locking onto key agendas and meeting windows to help companies answer three critical questions—what to say, when to say it, and to whom.
• Quarterly narrative campaigns (Campaign-in-a-box): each quarter, centered on a theme, producing a reusable set of narrative assets.
• ABAC engagement metronome: aligned with the ABAC 2026 meeting cadence (Jakarta in February, Mexico City in April, Pattaya in July, Shenzhen in November), creating quarterly nodes for corporate dialogue and partnership advancement—so “being seen” naturally becomes conversion into cooperation.

Who we invite to do this together

• Young people: become “narrative observers/content co-creators,” using real documentation and cross-cultural expression so APAC cooperation can be seen, understood, and trusted by more people.
• Companies and chambers of commerce: contribute cases, initiate thematic tracks, and co-build pilot projects—so corporate narrative becomes infrastructure for growth and cooperation, not a one-off communication action.
• Universities and researchers: use case studies and evaluation frameworks to turn business practices into citable, replicable, and verifiable knowledge assets.
• The broader public: as the “real audience” and “public accountability layer” of APAC cooperation—participating through reading, discussion, and feedback; adding social warmth beyond data through lived experience and perspectives; and advancing a narrative ecosystem that is more transparent, more responsible, and more understandable and trustworthy to the public (also aligned with APEC’s emphasis on broad stakeholder and public participation).

“25-Hour Digital Coast” believes that when narrative is authentic enough, evidence is solid enough, and cooperation is specific enough, a company’s growth will no longer be merely a business event—it will become a visible, followable, and replicable pathway toward shared prosperity in the Asia-Pacific.

25-Hour Digital Coast | Hanyang University APAC Narrative

Turn Hanyang’s complex AI capabilities into a shared language for APAC cooperation; upgrade “being seen” into being partnership-ready, executable, and replicable.

In the AI era, a university’s influence is no longer derived only from publication counts or technical breakthroughs, but from a rarer capability: a systematic ability to convert outcomes into cross-border trust, cross-border cooperation, and cross-border industry solutions. Today, powered by the evidence-based narrative method of “25-Hour Digital Coast” and guided by the annual cadence of APEC and ABAC as our timeline, we are building an APAC-facing AI-era collaboration system for Hanyang University.

The APEC 2026 window is already open

This means that 2026 is not a year for “temporary publicity,” but a cooperation year that can be designed in advance. Hanyang’s distinctive advantage is the ability to upgrade “results” into a “system”:

• An international collaboration and validation environment for future communications and AI-RAN/6G: VIAVI and Hanyang signed an MoU to advance AI-RAN and 5G/6G research, highlighting testing solutions, 6G Forward academic partnership, and international research networks.

• Global visibility in digital health: Hanyang (ERICA/Play Lab, etc.) received CES 2025 Best of Innovation-related recognition and coverage in digital health, offering a narrative entry point that is easiest for the public to understand and easiest to convert into industry cooperation.
• AI talent and international joint training mechanisms (RISE/Global RISE): the RISE system explicitly focuses on AI industry and AI talent, proposing international joint AI programs and inbound overseas talent mechanisms.
• “Strategy × intelligence” narrative capability: a curriculum centered on “global–strategy–intelligence,” delivered bilingually (English/Korean), naturally enabling cross-cultural agenda translation and cooperation design.

China–Korea narratives for the “Shenzhen cooperation window”

Hanyang (HYU) will prioritize alignment with the rhythm of APEC 2026 (China Year) and build a Shenzhen-oriented cooperation narrative pipeline. Anchored in Openness–Innovation–Cooperation, it will push university–industry collaboration toward a partnership-ready project pool in areas such as AI infrastructure validation, digital health applications, and joint AI talent cultivation.

What we want the world to see about Hanyang is not “promotion,” but a system that partners can plug into.

When 6G meets “verifiable cooperation”: How can Hanyang Beyond-G become “trust infrastructure” for the APAC AI era?

If AI-era competition is often described as competition in “algorithms and compute,” what truly determines whether cooperation can happen is often not how far ahead the technology is, but three things: whether it can be verified, whether it can be explained, and whether it can be co-built. That is why we chose to enter the “Hanyang APAC Narrative” through Beyond-G’s 6G and AI-RAN cooperation: it is not an isolated lab headline, but a collaboration approach that APAC partners can plug into.

1) Why “6G/AI-RAN” deserves a place in the language of APAC cooperation

APEC 2026’s three priorities are Openness / Innovation / Cooperation, and the annual cadence is already clear: the first technical meetings will be held 1–10 February 2026 in Guangzhou, meaning cooperation topics will unfold in more technical and industry-specific ways. ABAC’s 2026 cadence functions as the “business-side metronome of cooperation,” shaping how commercial dialogue progresses quarter by quarter.

Within this time structure, the meaning of “6G/AI-RAN” is not conceptual showmanship. It corresponds to the next decade’s industrial connectivity, the trustworthy operation of data and networks, and therefore directly shapes the “cooperation foundation” across manufacturing, logistics, cross-border trade, and digital services.

2) Beyond-G offers more than research results—it offers a “collaboration-ready validation environment”

VIAVI and Hanyang’s MoU clearly frames cooperation around AI-RAN, 5G, and 6G, while emphasizing testing solutions, academic partnership, and international research networks. Together these elements point to one shared direction for industry collaboration: turning an “imagined future network” into a verifiable real-world solution.

More importantly, Beyond-G’s official information indicates that it is a government-supported research center in Korea, receiving scaled research support and pursuing innovation for future 6G AI networks/communications technologies. For APAC partners, this means cooperation can be upgraded from “exchange” to three more reliable pathways:

• Co-validation: discussing technical routes within a shared testing and verification context;
• Co-training: enabling students and engineers to develop a shared language in real environments;
• Co-piloting: mapping network capabilities into concrete industry scenarios and making decisions based on metrics rather than slogans.

China’s official public information indicates that during APEC 2026 there will also be multiple sectoral ministerial meetings or high-level activities covering areas such as the digital economy, transport, tourism, and SMEs. This presents a practical question for Shenzhen-related industry partners: before the meetings, how do we turn cooperation topics into an “executable project package”?

We face common changes—such as how AI-RAN/6G will reshape the connectivity logic of smart manufacturing, cross-border supply chains, and urban operations. We also have verifiable capabilities—Beyond-G’s validation environment, combined with corporate scenarios and industrial chains. And we are willing to jointly define cooperation boundaries—because when risk boundaries are made explicit, cooperation happens faster.

A narrative that young people can empathize with and business leaders can convert is one that turns technology into life and cooperation into outcomes. For young audiences, we do not only talk about “6G”; we talk about “what kind of connectivity you will live in over the next decade”—smarter cities, more wearable health, and more real-time learning and work. For business audiences, we do not only talk about “trends”; we talk about “projects”: who provides what capabilities, where to validate them, and which metrics determine whether to scale.

What the “Hanyang APAC Narrative” seeks to demonstrate is not how strong Hanyang is, but this: when a university translates technology into a verifiable language of collaboration, it becomes more than a producer of knowledge—it becomes trust infrastructure for shared innovation across the Asia-Pacific. And within the rhythm of APEC 2026, trust and verification are precisely where cooperation truly begins.