Korea Lands Middle Ranking on Baffling Happiness Report

Korea ranks in the upper middle of the new World Happiness Report, which controversially finds that the entire world was just as happy in lockdown as before.

The annual report is published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Columbia University and compiled by economists who feel policymakers should pay more attention to people's wellbeing.

It claims that "positive social environments were far more prevalent than loneliness and that gains from increases in positive social connections exceed the well-being costs of additional loneliness, even during COVID-19." 

Korea ranks 57th out of 137 countries with a score of 5.951 points out of 10. It came fourth from the bottom in the OECD above Greece, Colombia and Turkey.

Last year Korea finished 59th.

But the report only surveys 100,000 people around the world about their subjective well-being, or fewer than 1,000 people from each country, plus a number of objective indicators such as per-capita GDP, healthy life expectancy, social support and corruption.

Finland topped the list with 7.804 points for the sixth year running, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Israel, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg and New Zealand. 

Nordic nations generally score high marks for their generous welfare services. 

The U.S. came 15th, Japan 47th and China 64th.

Afghanistan ranked at the bottom, Russia finished 70th and war-torn Ukraine 92nd. Aggressor Russia moved up higher in rankings than before the war, while Ukraine's score fell by only a small margin.