smokehard

According to the Global Peace Index for 2008, Korea ranks 32nd with a score of 1.691(the lower the score, the more peaceful the country) out of 140 countries. Ranked first was Iceland, with a score of 1.176. The least peaceful countries to live in are predictable, with Iraq (3.514) ranked last and North Korea (2.850) coming in at 133.

While report cards like this do appear wack at times - China (67th) is ranked more peaceful than the United States (97th) - they are interesting.

With China ranking more peaceful than the United States, I decided to compare CPI rankings with the countries the Olympic Torch Relay passed through. If you live in a low ranking country, and want to live somewhere more peaceful, perhaps this comparison will give you some ideas. The first thing I did was go to the 2008 Summer Olympic torch relay wikipedia page. I grabbed the list of cities on the route and fed them into a spreadsheet. I then looked at whether or not there were protests or violence during the torch relay and indicated yes, no, or maybe. maybe was used to indicate that I read there were arrests, but could not tell if there were protests or violence. For example, a maybe is included for Almaty, Kazakhstan because it appears they arrested everyone before they could protest. I then marked each nations CPI ranking.

Then I looked at cities that didn’t protest and had the best CPI rank. The result? If you are thinking of immigration, think Muscat, Oman! Not only will you be living in the 25th safest country on the index, you’ll be living in a country that does not protest Olympic torch relays. What more could you ask for? When I finally decide to leave South Korea (a hub of Northeast Asian Protesting), I will certainly do more than just giggle at the sound of Muscat.