North Korea placed last in a world democracy index in 2019 as it scored zero in electoral process and civil liberties, a report showed Saturday.

The communist state ranked at the bottom among the 167 countries surveyed with the lowest score of 1.08 out of 10.00, according to the Democracy Index 2019 published this week by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research arm of the British weekly The Economist.

The North‘s ranking in the EIU index has not changed since the London-based agency began to compile the data in 2006.

The report classified North Korea as an “authoritarian regime” out of four categories also including “full democracy,” “flawed democracy” and “hybrid regime.”

The North also received low scores of 2.50 and 1.67 for functioning of government and political participation, respectively.

Meanwhile, South Korea saw its ranking drop by two notches to 23rd last year from a year earlier as it was categorized as a “flawed democracy” with a score of 8.00, the report showed. (Yonhap)