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On the six continents of the world, there are approximately 1.5 billion people in total. They can be classified into five groups: Mongolian , Caucasian, Ethiopian, American, and Malayan. These races differ from one another in physical shape and skin color. The Malayan race is dark colored and lives on the Australian continent. The American race is dark red and they are the indigenous people on the North and South American continents. The Ethiopian race is black colored and indigenous to the African continent; they are barbarians. The Caucasians are very white in skin color and comprise all peoples in the European continent , including the English and the French. They are the most advanced in today’s world and rank at the top. The Mongolians are yellow colored, and we belong to this race. They live on the Asian continent and they are the most numerous. [The peoples of] Korea, China, and Japan belong to this group. Since they live on the same continent, have the same skin color, and use the same scripts, they are specially close. Moreover, their lands are adjacent to one another and these three countries, therefore, have kept frequent contacts and maintained very friendly relations as neighbors, although they had refused to have any contacts with other foreign countries since ancient times. Their interdependence, like that of lips and teeth, is particularly noteworthy. They must not dwell on any resentment or ill will against one another; instead, they ought to encourage, assist, and support , as hands and feet would. Only then they can hope to survive— together. The preceding sentences outline the fivefold classification of human races. They look different and live far apart, and, therefore, they had be80 13. Classification of the Five Races lieved for five or six thousand years that they alone existed and nobody else. Naturally, their languages, scripts, manners, and customs diverged ever more widely, and each of them valued only their own versions and claimed that only their laws were just; today they differ so much that they cannot be compared to one another. Basically, we are all children of one God. We are all brothers and sisters . To draw an analogy, imagine that the descendants of a common ancestor have lived far apart in isolation from one another. In the course of many generations, their customs, clothing, and food have changed in order to adapt to local conditions. If they should meet now, they would forget their common ancestry and feel like foreigners to one another. Or take our Korea for an example. We are blood relatives from the same root and we are fellow subjects of the same nation. Yet in every part of the country, east, west, south, or north, villages are different from one another, they often tend to speak ill of the others, there is a great deal of mutual ignorance, and they even use words that others do not understand , all these because the society remains closed and mutual travel and contacts have not been opened. Similarly, although various peoples of the world live separately and clear distinctions exist amongst them, who would deny that they share the same common root? There was a time when human intelligence did not go beyond what we could see or hear. We did not attempt to go over the high mountains or sail across the vast oceans because, we believed, the far sides were where the sky and the earth came together. We, therefore, did not share the language or exchange visits, nor did we change the customs and institutions to accommodate those of other peoples. And this has led to the [racial] distinctions. If all nations are in contact with one another, if their people mingle as if they were from the same family, and if they love one another like brothers and sisters and cultivate close emotional ties, then the customs shall converge and even the people, with their languages and scripts, may become uniform. This is the purpose of enlightenment. As we review the changes in the world during the last one hundred years, we can well estimate the future changes in the next one hundred years. In our country alone, there had been a strenuous opposition to enlightenment , but changes have occurred nevertheless in an unheralded and natural way, and not a few things have been altered every day every year. This will become evident when we compare today’s conditions with those of ten years ago. Even if...

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