The ASEAN-Korea Centre presented awards on Wednesday to 10 winners of the 2020 ASEAN-Korea Academic Essay Contest.

The contest, jointly organized by the ASEAN-Korea Centre, the Korea National Diplomatic Academy’s Center for ASEAN-India Studies and the Center for Strategic and International Studies Indonesia, received 112 entries from students throughout the ASEAN region and South Korea from August to November last year.

The topic was promoting digital partnership between ASEAN countries and Korea, and the grand prize went to a team from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore that wrote about how to strengthen digital economic cooperation through an integrated online platform.

The center said the quality of this year’s entries was higher than those of previous years, attesting to the increased interest in and awareness of ASEAN-Korea relations among students.

“This year’s ASEAN-Korea Academic Essay Contest was both timely and meaningful in that it invited creative solutions and in-depth research by digital-savvy youths from ASEAN and Korea,” said Lee Hyuk, secretary-general of the ASEAN-Korea Centre, during the livestreamed award ceremony.

“I hope the webinar will provide a platform for the winners to exchange their thoughts with fellow winners and professors and further develop their scholarly works.”

(khnews@heraldcorp.com)