29page

29 Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 14 15 18 28 33 46 50 57 59 61 88 99 111 118 130 132 140 144 145 146 147 149 150 171 174 175 178 179 180 Finland netherlands norway luxembourg andorra liechtenstein denmark iceland new Zealand sweden germany switZerland canada australia united kingdom united states taiwan republic oF korea Japan hong kong mongolia greece braZil united arab emirates thailand indonesia india cambodia myanmar bangladesh malaysia philippines singapore lao people’s democratic republic Vietnam china turkmenistan democratic people’s republic oF korea eritrea 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 3 1 2 2 4 14 3 7 6 3 10 15 3 4 5 7 0 1 6 2 2 2 1 3 2 2 1 1 1 Country Freedom score (0=most Free, 100=least Free) S o u rc e : Re p o r t e r s W i t h o u t Bo rd e r s 6.4 6.46 6.52 6.7 6.82 7.02 7.43 8.5 8.55 8.98 10.23 10.47 10.99 16.91 19.93 23.49 23.82 25.66 26.02 26.55 30.3 31.33 34.03 36.03 37.94 38.15 40.34 40.97 41.43 42.58 42.73 43.69 44.29 71.22 72.36 72.91 80.81 81.96 84.83 South Korea saw its ranking for press free- dom decline in the indexes released by both Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House in 2014. The country’s rank in the former index slipped seven places from the previous year, from 50 to 57. In a summary of its findings, the France- based NGO noted the prosecution of Choo Chin-woo, a SisaIN journalist, and Kim Ou- joon, a host of the popular podcast “Naneun Ggomsuda,” on charges of defaming the younger brother and father of President Park Geun-hye. The two were eventually acquitted in October 2013. Reporters Without Borders uses a ques- tionnaire and its own assessment of the level of violence against journalists to compile its rankings, based on pluralism, media inde- pendence, environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, and transparency and infrastructure. U.S.-based Freedom House, which dropped South Korea one place to 32 in its latest rankings, has yet to publish explanatory information for this year’s score. The 2013 index, however, cited the prosecution of cit- izens under the National Security Law and parachute appointments made by the Lee Myung-bak government as threats to press freedom. Freedom House’s index is based on three categories: political environment, legal envi- ronment and economic environment. Press freedom in south Korea