South Korea climbed three notches in an international corruption awareness ranking to 43rd out of 175 countries in 2014, a report by a global anti-corruption watchdog showed Wednesday.
South Korea scored 55 out of 100 in the 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) report issued by the Berlin-based Transparency International (TI).
The index evaluates countries based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be, using corruption-related data collected by governance and business experts, according to the TI website.
A score of 70 and above is considered clean, while a score of 50 and above means not completely corrupted.
Experts, however, said South Korea’s slight improvement should be taken with a grain of salt, as two countries that ranked higher than South Korea last year, Saint Lucia and Brunei, were not included in this year’s survey.
South Korea also tied with Latvia and Malta in 2014, the report showed.
Among the 34 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), South Korea ranked 27th, unchanged from last year.
Compared with 2008, South Korea neither significantly improved nor declined in corruption perception scores or ranking. It scored 5.6 out of 10 and ranked 40th in 2008, Transparency International Korea, the local chapter, said.
TI Korea said South Korea would have scored 65 in 2014 had it continued its upward momentum between 1999 and 2008.
“South Korea should make abolishing corruption its top priority and overhaul its anti-corruption policy entirely,” TI Korea said in a statement.
It said South Korea could do better in terms of restoring independent anti-corruption watchdogs and protecting whistle-blowers from retribution, among others.
North Korea, which joined the list in 2011, scored 8 out of 100 and shared last place with Somalia in 2014, according to the report.
Denmark topped the list with 92 points, followed by New Zealand with 91 and Finland with 89.
Singapore ranked the highest among Asian countries at 6th.
Japan and Hong Kong were next with 15th and 17th, respectively. (Yonhap)
