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133 countries, with 1 the best and 133 the worst. Many other nations are unranked but appear in the Social Progress Imperative’s reports. East Asia Pacific is a very large region and includes very different countries. China is a massive nation with a large population and thousands of years of recorded history and culture. Land-locked Mongolia is in the process of transforming from a nomadic society into a more urban, modern one. Japan was an economic powerhouse in the late 20th century and is still one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world. South Korea is nearly as economically prosperous as Japan, but North Korea has been closed to most commerce and communication with the rest of the world since its founding in 1948 and as a result is extremely poor. The nations of Southeast Asia still suffer from the aftereffects of wars that raged for decades and subsequent political instability; AIDS is also a serious problem throughout this region. Australia and New Zealand were settled by British colonists in the 18th and 19th centuries and thus are inhabited largely by English-speaking people of European ancestry. The island nations that dot the Pacific all have cultures of their own; the vast distances that separate them from one another and the mainland make all types of communication and transportation difficult. As you might expect, these countries show a wide range of social progress. New Zealand earned an overall rank of 5th in the world, Australia ranks 10th, Japan 15th, and South Korea 29th. On the other end, Myanmar ranks 119th overall, close to the bottom of the 133 ranked nations. Cambodia is 99th and Laos 102nd. Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines sit in the middle. The Social Progress Imperative could not gather enough information on North Korea, Papua New Guinea, or Vietnam to create a full score, although it is likely

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E AST A SIA AND THE P ACIFIC