S. Korea climbs one notch in global corruption ranking for 2009

By Kim Eun-jung

SEOUL, Nov. 17 (Yonhap) -- South Korea improved one notch in an international ranking of political and public corruption, placing 39th among 180 nations in the 2009 annual report by an anti-corruption watchdog released Tuesday.

According to the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) of 2009 issued by the
nongovernmental agency Transparency International (TI), South Korea scored 5.5
along with Brunei and Oman on a scale of zero to 10, with zero representing
highly corrupt and 10 being corruption free. The country earned a score of 5.4
last year, ranking 40th among 180 nations.
"Repetitive corruption cases involving politicians and government officials show
that there are still safe havens for corruption in South Korea," Kim Keo-sung of
TI Korea said. "To end the current stagnation, we urge the government to
establish independent anti-corruption committees."
South Korea fell short of the 7.04 average for the 30 member nations of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The country also trailed
behind Asian neighbors such as Singapore (9.3), Australia (8.7), Hong Kong (8.2)
and Japan (7.7), the report showed.
New Zealand topped the list as the world's least corrupt nation, followed by
Denmark and Sweden. Somalia, Afghanistan and Myanmar were at the bottom of the
rankings.
Scores were calculated based on up to 13 different polls from 10 independent
institutions between 2008 and 2009.
ejkim@yna.co.kr