1.After the country celebrated its first female leader when Park Geun-hye became President in February 2013, she was removed from office in March 2017 for corruption.

2.While South Korea ranks in the upper-third of Transparency International’s 2016 Corruption Perception Index, it does not stack up well with its peer group.

3.Among the 35 OECD developed economies, just six countries rank worse than South Korea: Mexico, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Hungary and Slovakia. Most of them are economically less advanced than South Korea.

4.Moreover, 50% of South Koreans polled said corruption had increased recently – an unsurprising sentiment amid the far-reaching presidential scandal.

5.A key factor in this perception of corruption is the dominant role of the chaebols — the large, often family-owned and family-run industrial conglomerates in South Korea.

6.It is not by accident that the country’s largest industrial group, Samsung, finds itself at the center of the corruption charges that led to the ouster of President Park.

7.The chaebols’ dominance over the South Korean economy – and the high level of business concentration that this represents – create a dangerous chokehold over the economy and politics.

8.Moreover, as the unfolding of the recent corruption scandal generated a lot of government backlash to reporting on it, South Korea dropped 10 places between 2015 and 2016 in the global rankings on media freedom.

9.South Korea has long struggled with press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders, which ranked it 70th in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index.

10.One reason is that the country has laws on the books that allow imprisonment for defamatory or pro-North Korean reporting. Both often prompt self-censorship among journalists.

Sources: The Globalist Research Center, Transparency International, Reporters Without Borders and New York Times