Korea Ranks 40th in the World in Corruption Index

As much as Koreans like to see polls and rankings this however is one ranking they probably won’t publicize to much. Transparency International has released their annual world corruption index. South Korea was ranked 40th in the world for corruption out of 158, tied with Hungary and Italy. The top 20 least corrupt nations in world is listed below. Notice many of the top countries are smaller countries where it is easier to monitor state corruption:

1 Iceland
2 Finland & New Zealand
4 Denmark
5 Singapore
6 Sweden
7 Switzerland
8 Norway
9 Australia
10 Austria
11 Netherlands & United Kingdom
13 Luxembourg
14 Canada
15 Hong Kong
16 Germany
17 USA
18 France
19 Belgium & Ireland
21 Chile & Japan

I don’t feel so bad that the US is 17th when it’s probably got more land area and population than the countries ranked ahead of it combined. So good job USA. Looking at the list you can really draw a correlation between countries with good government and little corruption unlike further down the list you can obviously see countries with poor governments that are hindered by corruption.

What I find a little surprising is that countries that don’t have the economic affluence of Korea are ranked ahead of it such as Botswana and Jordan. Looking at the rest of the list; countries with economic affluence seem to be the least corrupt.

Korea can take some solace in the fact that they did beat out China. China was ranked all the way down at number 78. However, Korea’s main rival Japan soundly beat them by being ranked number 21. Hopefully as democracy improves here, Korea will continue to improve their ranking. I guess we will see next year.

Hat Tip: Asiapundit