Jeronimo or living Korean-Caribbean

On February 19, 2020, I attended the screening of Joseph Juhn's documentary film "Jeronimo" (2019) at the Korean Cultural Center in Paris.

I usually keep my thoughts on Korea for my blog myinsaeng.com, but this documentary film is the ideal opportunity to illustrate my vision of Karukerament, i.e. looking at the world from my point of view as a woman from Guadeloupe.

"Jeronimo" tells the story of Jeronimo Lim Kim (Korean name: Lim Eun Jo), a Korean-Cuban man. Son of an immigrant, he fought alongside Fidel Castro during the Cuban revolution. A strong supporter of socialism, he worked tirelessly to create a society without inequality for all Cubans, including the descendants of Korean immigrants. In the last years of his life, his goal was to give visibility and recognition to the Korean community built on international political dynamics.

On my blog myinsaeng.com you can read about my viewing experience and the insights it has given me. Here, my focus will be on reviewing the representation of the Caribbean. How was the Korean community in Cuba built? How does it define its identity? How can we approach this story of uprooting / rerooting with a Karukerament perspective?

history of exile

In the beginning, there is immigration. It is a neutral word to describe the departure of a thousand people dreaming of a better life as Korea came under Japanese ruling at the beginning of the 20th century. Arriving in Mexico with hearts full of hope, these people found themselves working in the fields of henequen for five years. One of the experts interviewed reiterated that they were "slaves". I should point out that it was a Korean man who spoke in English, there were Korean subtitles so there’s no ambiguity about the word.

From my Karukerament perspective, the situation described is indentureship which is the legal system set up after the abolition of slavery to keep on to exploiting human beings... I know that the living conditions of the indentured workers were as horrible as those of Black enslaved people, but as an AfroCaribbean woman, hearing the word "slave" without a more precise historical contextualization on how indentureship came together disturbed me. There would certainly be plenty material to create films addressing the indentureship issue in Mexico, but this wasn’t “Jeronimo” ’s goal. But one or two intertitles to give more contextualization wouldn’t have been too much to set the historical context even if only since the abolition of slavery in Mexico in 1857. Having said that, my reaction also made me question my own perception of the word “indentureship”. Isn't the word too neutral? Or is the small number of fictional works on this issue too sanitized (cf. my flash review of Sharmilla the Indian with three families)? Or is it a lack of visibility for this issue? In a nutshell, this is a detail that, from my point of view, is important. Let's go back to the film.

At the end of their 5-year contract, Korean indentured labourers turned exiled because Japan annexed Korea in 1910, so they could no longer return home. Some stayed in Mexico, others migrated to other countries. At the beginning of the 1920s, 300 of these exiled Korean people left for Cuba and found themselves once again in the henequen and sugar cane fields. The wealth they hoped for was still not forthcoming, but life went on. These people married and started their own families. And this was how first-gen Jeronimo was born.

history of politics

Jeronimo grew up at a time of politically tumultuous struggle on the international scene. He spent his childhood watching his father being an activist and fighting for better living conditions for Korean immigrants in Cuba. When he was a teenager, he lived through the World War II time of restriction. As his community refused to acknowlege the partition of Korea after the Korean war (1949 - 1953), socialism became his ideology. His first steps in his twenties were taken alongside Fidel Castro in law school, to the point where Jeronimo found himself in the front line of the Cuban revolution. From the 1960s until the end of the 1980s, he played an important role in the Castro government. Without denying his Korean origins, he dedicated his life to Cuba, the land where he was born. He gave his all in politics to build a better Cuban society...

From a Karukerament perspective, what does building a better society mean? Are the politics really at the service of the population? Guadeloupe being a French territory, there should be mutual efforts to work in the best interests of Guadeloupe and France to build a better Guadeloupean society, right? I have one word for you: kepone. And us, as French citizens, which reaction should we have? What can we legitimately feel when facing such situation?

Jeronimo's loyalty to the regime should probably be questioned because of his origins, but I believe the film's approach was just meant to say that he was Cuban above all. This Korean community defines itself, and I quote, as "100% Korean and 100% Cuban". Even while marrying into the Afrocuban community. There is no 50/50, there is no choice to be made either. The discriminations they necessarily suffered are never mentioned here. This silence further amplifies their sense of belonging to the Cuban nation. They are at home. No one can convince them that they aren’t Cuban... Certainly, the fact that Cuba is a politically independent island probably "simplifies" the question of identity. Everything is done on the same territory. The important decision-making institution aren’t on the other side of an ocean. But more than a political history of the world through this individual destiny, “Jeronimo” questions the definition of cultural identity from the point of view of the diaspora.

Cultural history of a diaspora

With the disintegration of the Soviet bloc starting from the end of the 1980s, Jeronimo questioned his political convictions. He traveled and saw the material comfort produced by capitalism. Some thirty years after the Cuban revolution, the prosperous egalitarian society he dreamed of in his youth had yet to materialize. At the same time, South Korea began its economic take-off. After the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, the country decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War by inviting the diaspora. Jeronimo fulfilled his father's wish to return to motherland. After this trip, he set himself a new goal: to solidify the Korean community in Cuba so that it could keep its Korean roots. Why did this challenge only come to him at the end of his life? For the film, it is because this first generation of children of immigrants was in immediate survival. They had no time to overthink the past when their present was uncertain. When establishing a link with this motherland became possible, their fantasized idea of Korea was confronted to reality. Without speaking the language and with being away from the motherland for almost a century, how were these Cuban people still Korean? By learning the language, by keeping alive the traditions of their ancestors but also by creating their own traditions. The success of Hallyu over the last twenty years helps them in this regard.

Thanks to Jeronimo, a monument commemorating the arrival of the first Koreans in Cuba has been erected, physically marking their presence in the landscape. A cultural organization was founded, but it doesn’t have legal existence because of the political games of influence between North Korea and South Korea. These Cubans of Korean origin recognize only one and indivisible Korea. The film ends on the question of the legitimacy to claim a history, a culture and an identity. Who is Korean the most? Those who sing old traditional songs whose meaning they don’t understand because they don’t speak the language but know nothing else, or those who let these traditional songs fall into oblivion because they’re considered too retro? Are the traditions of the diaspora less pure than the ones of those living on the motherland? Do we lose the essence of an identity when we are born and live on another continent without knowing the language of our ancestors? The answer in this film is that identity is transformed. You can be limited in the way you keep this essence, but as long as you make the conscious effort to recognize the existence of this identity, it will never disappear.

From a Karukerament perspective, this brings me back to the debates on "the West Indians from here and the West Indians from there", on the place of Creole in the definition of our identity, on xenophobia towards people from other Caribbean countries, on the relationship with France, on Caribbean pride, on the commitment to make Caribbean culture shine…

I don't remember who say these words in the film, but someone says that Korea is for them this motherland where they know they will never return. This certainty, this finality took my breath away. Literally. Because I know I will never go back to Guadeloupe. Never, let's not exaggerate. But unlike those who are considering "going back to settle down" now, or in 10 years or for their retirement, I don't see myself living there. Even if all the problems were solved, even if my living standards were met, I just don’t feel the need to . It is a discourse that I don’t hear often, although it is a reality shared by many. And I have the right to feel that way. Hence the importance of academic work and cultural initiatives to analyze and trace the plurality of these identities that are constantly being developed from solid roots. This allows me to humbly accept my ignorance caused by the fact that I don’t live in Guadeloupe anymore. It helps me avoid feeling guilty. By the simple fact of existing, recognizing and above all respecting Guadeloupe, I am part of it as much as it is a part of me. I help to define it as much as it defines me. Where I am, Guadeloupe is. Where I am, Guadeloupe and I are.