North Korea ranks lowest in world democracy index last year: poll

A poster is displayed on a street in Pyongyang marking the 73rd anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People's Army in this Feb. 8 photo. AFP

North Korea ranked the lowest in a world democracy index last year for the 16th consecutive year, according to a recent report.

The reclusive regime placed at the bottom among the 167 countries reviewed, with an overall score of 1.08 out of 10, according to the Democracy Index 2020 published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research division of the British weekly The Economist.

The North has ranked the lowest in the EIU index since the agency began compiling related data in 2006.

The agency classified Pyongyang as an "authoritarian regime" out of four designations, which included "full democracy," "flawed democracy" and "hybrid regime."

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It scored zero in electoral process and civil liberties, and received low scores of 2.5 and 1.67 for the functioning of government and political participation, respectively.

Meanwhile, South Korea moved up the index from a "flawed democracy" in 2015 to a "full democracy" last year.

However, the agency said South Korea was among the few countries that "went much further than the rest of the world in tracking and policing their citizens and locking them down" in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Yonhap)