S.K.’s corruption level equivalent to other economies 60% its size
The Korean headquarters of Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based non-governmental organization aimed at fighting corruption, announced the results of its 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on October 6. South Korea moved up two spots from 44th to 42nd place out of 163 countries, receiving a transparency score of 5.1 points out of 10, 0.1 point higher than last year but still not enough to best improvements made by other countries. On the CPI, a score of zero represents an extremely high level of corruption, and 10 is relative transparency; as for rank, the closer a country’s position to No. 1, the less corruption it exhibits. The Hankyoreh, after comparing the rankings and each nation’s economic size, found that the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of 15 nations recording similar CPI scores as South Korea’s was US$9,800 on average, whereas South Korea’s GDP was about US$16,300 last year. This indicates that South Korea’s corruption levels are on par with less wealthy, less developed nations, or economies 60% the size of Korea’s. Prof. Yun Tae-beom of Korea National Open University said that The Hankyoreh’s comparison is meaningful, pointing to a general correalation between a nation’s economic size and level of corruption.Finland, Iceland and New Zealand maintained the top position in the index, with 9.6 points each, the same results as last year. Haiti ranked as the most corrupt country, with a score of 1.8 points. The CPI is a composite survey based on polling done on resident and non-resident businesspersons and country analysts regarding practices of corruption. [englishhani@hani.co.kr]
