Theory of blood type

In his book “Germania,” the ancient Roman historian Tacitus described German tribes deemed barbaric by Romans as untainted and unadulterated. In contrast to the Romans, who founded an empire but headed toward decadence and collapse, he called the Germans a “proud, brave and virtuous people.” Discovered in an abbey in Germany, the book eventually triggered German nationalism. Later, the Nazis leveraged Tacitus` quotations to stress German superiority. After declaring the revival of a lofty Germany, Adolf Hitler banned mixing blood with Jews and orchestrated the murders of six million Jews in the Holocaust based on the book, which said German tribes banned marriage with other tribes. How horrific to call this a “butterfly effect” of the 1,800-year-old book written out of a historian’s academic interest in a region that the Romans failed to incorporate.

Jews, who were subject to ethnic cleansing by Aryans, value maternal lineage. If a Jew`s mother or grandmother is Jewish, one is 100 percent Jewish even if the father or grandfather is not. Jews think mothers matter more than fathers in their lineage. They also have a strong sense of elitism. Given the outstanding history left by 13 million to 15 million Jews, it is understandable that Sir Winston Churchill called Jews the world`s most outstanding people. Park Jae-sun, a former Korean ambassador to Morocco and an expert on Jews, said in his book, “I’m not sure whether it’s coincidence or not, but Jews hardly give birth to mentally-challenged babies."

A Korean professor’s research into blood type is all the rage in Korea. Jeong Joon-young of Hallym University said Japanese medical doctors were obsessed with categorizing the blood types of Koreans in the 1920s. They tried to rationalize a sense of Japanese superiority with a German scholar’s theory. In 1919, Ludwig Hirschfeld concluded that more advanced peoples have more blood A types than B with an “ethnic ratio,” which divided the number of population of Type As plus Type ABs by that of Type Bs plus Type ABs. The ratio of Japanese living in Korea was 1.78 but that of Koreans in Japan was 1.07. By region, South Jeolla Province had 1.41, North Chungcheong Province 1.08, Gyeonggi Province 1.0, and North Pyeongan Province 0.83. Japan justified its colonial rule by saying Jeolla, which is geographically relatively close to Japan, was somewhat better.

Eugenics, or the science of the genetic improvement of humans, is based on "yellow peril." The inferiority of Type Bs or yellow peril was created by the research that claimed that Europeans are more Type A and O while Asians are more Type B. Japan, which adapted Western culture into its own, wanted to justify its colonial rule by claiming that more Japanese were Type A than Koreans. Japan’s failure to do so proves that the idea of blood type affecting a country`s destiny is wrong and anachronistic.

Editorial Writer Ha Tae-won (triplets@donga.com)