Personally I think intellectualism consists of a few components. The first is pure, raw "intelligence" or "brilliance", neither of which is particularly well defined, but it is my main criteria. For a nation, this is is essentially the power of science, invention, technology, etc.

Next would be something like "diversity of thought" and "beauty of art". This includes both how "free" the people are, as well as how meaningful the creative, artistic, philosophical works of the nation are. This includes art, poetry, scripture, books, TV, music, theater, etc.

Finally, I use a "modern day weighting" system. This means, if there was some hypothetical country that was historically a powerhouse, but was not remarkable in modern day, they'd be ranked equally to a country which was a world leader today, but inconsequential historically (or didn't exist until recently).

With these criteria, I believe a country like China has sheer intellectual power and the artistic contributions which outweigh the (quite terrible) conformity of thought; Korea, on the other hand, is "too conformist" given the weight of its contributions.