By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter


South Korea’s index dropped by three places from the 43rd to the 46th in the 76-country peace standings in 2005. The World Peace Forum, a South Korean private research center, announced the peace index Thursday.

Even though its standing declined, South Korea’s level of peace, measured by the peace index, has improved from 66.8 in 2003 through 71 in 2004 to 72.5 in 2005, said Kim Jin-hyun, chairman of the forum and former minister of science and technology.

The index is an arithmetic average of the three component dimensions of peace; domestic political peace, military-diplomatic peace and socio-economic peace. The index is based on statistics gathered in 2004 from 76 countries.

``There were many negative events harming peace in Korea during the research period of 2004 such as a harsh debate concerning the dispatch of soldiers to Iraq’’ Lee Sang-hyun, research follow of the Sejong Institute, who joined the research, said.

But the state of peace last year was relatively better, compared to the unstable situation in 2003, which was littered with severe conflicts such as anti-U.S. rallies and pro-environment demonstrations, he said.

The index report, the third issue of the forum’s annual effort to measure the state of world peace since 2000, was released at a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Seoul. The world peace index 2005 recorded 73 on average. When world peace is compared for the past three years, the first two years displayed a deteriorating trend for peace, Lee said.

``After that, the state of world peace shows a little improvement. As a result, the state of world peace for the last year has scarcely recovered to the level prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001,’’ he said.

According to the report, Denmark was the most peaceful country in the world, recording 90.3 in 2005, one notch up from 2003 and 2004. Denmark’s rise results from an improvement in the military-diplomatic peace from 78.8 in 2004 to 90.3 in 2005.

Japan, which marked 82.3, stood in 19th place. But it fell nine places from 10th last year.

``Many accidents and disasters inflicted the nation in 2004, such as the stand-off with neighboring countries triggered by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine and a very strong earthquake that shook Niigata prefecture,’’ Lee said.

The U.S. ranked the 51st, followed by the U.K., the 52nd.

``They recorded lower peace ratings due to their lower states of military-diplomatic peace,’’ Lee said. ``In the year 2004, those nations that participated in the Iraq war held the lower ranks, and the countries neighboring Iraq also experienced lower levels of peace.’’

im@koreatimes.co.kr