Ahn Cheol-Soo (a former candidate for the presidency) gave a lecture hosted by the General Student Council of Daegu University in Daegu University's Seongsan Hall at 2:20 pm on October 28th, 2012. Ahn began his lecture with the phrase, "The future is already here with us", which was the theme of the lecture. Before getting into the main part of his lecture, he first spoke about the Hydrofluoric Acid leakage accident in Gu-mi. He said that he felt deeply sorry when he saw the accident site first hand, because a lot of things around the accident were being handled poorly. He said it is important to prevent the same kind of accident from reoccurring. Through this experience we should learn how to respond if this kind of accident were to happen again.

The body of his lecture was as follows:

Ahn said that he announced his decision to run for the presidency because he decided to devote himself as a politician. Because of that, he said, he must explain his vision for the future of this country before any other issues. He said that his election pledges would be made according to the vision he has. Actually, he didn't forget to keep in check the other presidential candidates, Park Geun-Hye and Moon Ja-in, by asking the audience what pledges of Park or Moon they remember. The process to make election pledges should be as follows, according to Ahn: first, a candidate should establish the general direction precisely and gain agreements of the people, and then he/she can announce the pledges in order of how they likely they are to become reality. According to this process, he said, he had considerably planned and announced his election pledges officially yesterday, on 27th of October, not to make empty promises.

His vision statement focused largely on political reformation. According to Ahn, one of the problems in this country is the politics itself, which should be responsible for solving the problems in the country, is in a deadlock. He said that politics is the central place to solve the problems. According to him, the most important thing is to reduce the power of the president. Citing the phrases of Francis Fukuyama, he said that democracy is to make containment institutions to keep balance independently and objectively. He said that we can make democratic progress by checks and balances to the president by making the independent institutions free of influence from the power of the president. Ahn pledged to reduce his presidential power to a proper degree if he were to be elected, as he had announced to run for the presidency. He said the key point of that policy would be about the authority to appoint officials. He said that he will reduce the number of positions that the president can appoint to 1/10 compared to the present. And he said he would make the other 9/10 independent of the automatic promotion system to ensure the selection of the most qualified people through an independent committee for human resources.

Ahn proposed that the other important issue next to political reform is raising talented people locally. Usually we think that people go to school and get a job, and contribute to where they were born and raised. But the truth is, when we cannot find suitable work in our hometown, we cannot help leaving our home and going to other places, especially to Seoul. How can we develop talented people regionally and prevent them from going to Seoul? Ahn said that we need an approach to encourage talented people to work for their local communities.

The third issue was job creation. Ahn said that for job creation, in addition to the government's efforts, the private sector should try hard to create jobs, or to find a way to start new businesses, and through those kinds of efforts we should find the key to solve the problem.

Ahn said that he had heard a lot of concerns after his vision announcement. Someone told him that even though Ahn's vision was right, he would face resistance by the established classes and have a hard time during his presidential campaigns. Others told him that his vision is unreal and just like dreams. But Ahn said those are important challenges that he has to accomplish while he is in politics. He showed a strong will to be a politician to contribute even a little part to the politics to reflect the will of the people. Finally, he finished his lecture by asking for a lot of attention and support for his candidacy.