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I would argue that two of the nations listed at the top (Singapore and South Korea) have many similar problems. Both are fairly religious societies and have pretty strong anti-intellectual politicians.

As someone who's attended high school in both the United States and South Korea, I'm also not seeing how the Korean society is any less anti-intellectual - we have moronic interest groups, we believed in fan death for generations, our public schools are absolutely horrid, and we enjoy censoring large swaths of the internet (although admittedly a lot of that is pornography).

The only "leg up" I can think South Korea has is their focus on Hakwons (basically after school tutors).