Ali Dar, Adviser to the Chief Minister of Punjab, has met Lee Kai-ho, a Member of the National Assembly of South Korea and former Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, to discuss cooperation in agri-tech and learning exchange programmes in emerging technologies between South Korea and Pakistan. The meeting was shared by the Office of AI Punjab, which said Dar extended a formal invitation to Lee to visit Punjab. Dar was appointed Special Adviser to Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Special Initiatives, a role that covers AI policy, cross-departmental pilot projects, and partnerships with global technology organisations and academia, so a meeting with a senior Korean figure on agriculture and technology falls squarely within that brief.
Lee is a long-serving lawmaker with the Democratic Party of Korea who served as agriculture minister from 2018 to 2019, which gives him direct experience of how South Korea runs its farm policy. South Korea’s agriculture ministry has since been pushing a digital transition aimed at climate pressure and rural population decline, including an AI smart farming platform developed with the private sector. That makes Korea a logical partner for a province that is trying to bring digital tools to its farmers. The announcement does not say where or when the meeting took place, who else attended, or whether Lee accepted the invitation, and it names no specific exchange programmes, institutions, or technologies.
The conversation fits a wider push in Punjab to apply AI to agriculture. Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture Osama Leghari said at an agriculture conference in Lahore earlier this month that the provincial government is working to bring AI into farmers’ daily lives, with the aim of letting them forecast yields and productivity. Punjab has also declared the current year the Year of the Value Chain, encouraging corporate partners to work directly with farmers so that middlemen are removed and growers keep a larger share of returns. The Office of AI Punjab’s hashtags, including AI Vision 2029 and AI Enabled Delivery, show the meeting is being presented as part of that longer plan to use AI across government services and sectors such as farming.
Korea-Pakistan talks of this kind often stay at the level of introductions and invitations, so the real signal will be what follows. A visit by Lee to Punjab, a memorandum of understanding between a Korean institution and a Punjab department, or a training programme that sends Pakistani agriculture and technology officials to Korea would turn the discussion into something measurable. For farmers in Punjab, the question is whether any exchange leads to usable tools such as crop monitoring, yield forecasting, or small-scale mechanisation that reach growers instead of staying within government workshops. Until the Office of AI Punjab shares dates, partners, and a work plan, the meeting remains an early step.
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