I can’t take that ranking seriously, it has Ireland and Australia safer than Japan, and Italy, France and the UK safer than South Korea. It’s just a survey of random people’s feelings - apparently people who don’t know the countries in question

For example here’s another survey showing a massive difference: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&country2=South+Korea&city1=London&city2=Seoul&tracking=getDispatchComparison

And here’s a comparison of crime rate numbers showing most of your top twenty safest countries as less safe than most East Asian countries

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KOR/south-korea/crime-rate-statistics

This is all on average of course

Depends on the town and the teenagers but random violent assault isn’t unheard of, they have some serious cultural/behavioural/psychological issues. They know the police are stretched too thin to respond to calls so they run riot.

Someone glanced at them? Fair game for a wind up or pretext for a “fight” Didn’t glance at them? Doesn’t matter, one of them was in the mood anyway…

That’s a good experience, I hope it continues! There are better and worse areas of course.

I’m a man - It’s a good point, and I think that’s the exception to the whole “East Asia is super safe” idea. I can’t say whether it’s better or worse here compared to Europe though, and would like to hear from any women who’ve lived on both sides. I know women who’ve been attacked in both countries. Drink spiking / rape is a problem here but I’m not sure about the comparison. It’s underreported here too.

Without minimising harassment and sexual assault, women living in Asia still benefit from the overall difference in safety / violence culture - plenty of Asian women are shocked to be robbed and even physically assaulted when visiting Europe. It’s not only perpetrated by men, some of the young women are just as feral…

Haven’t moved back to Europe yet, but when visiting I realised how big the difference is, mostly because of the safety / how you have to carry yourself when out and about. There’s so much “minor” or latent violence that’s accepted as normal where I grew up, I didn’t even think about it until I’d lived elsewhere.

In Seoul you don’t have to watch your bag or laptop in a cafe, you don’t have to check behind you while using an ATM, you don’t have to check your surroundings before pulling your phone out of your pocket, you don’t have to keep checking your pockets and guard for pickpockets, you don’t have to keep tabs on which guys at the pub are likely to be looking for a fight, you don’t have to cross the road when a group of young lads (even teenagers) are approaching, you don’t worry about whether you locked the doors, when you hear a noise at night you don’t have to grab a makeshift weapon and clear the flat because nobody is breaking in. Until I left, I didn’t realise just how much mental energy I had put into thinking about safety and violence.

Tried both. Having a job lined up was like easy mode, I didn’t really worry about anything. Moving without a job seemed doable until I was selling investments to pay rent and wondering if I’d ever get a job. Ultimately it worked out but if I was to do it again I’d try to line up some sort of income as early as possible - it’s just less stress overall and saves a ton of money.