Jeronimo

Year: 2019

Duration: 93 min

Director Joseph travels to Cuba in 2015 and gets picked up by a 3rd generation Korean-Cuban taxi driver named Patricia. Surprised to know that there is a large Korean community in Cuba, Joseph starts to explore the history and current state of Korean-Cuban community and inevitably discovers Jeronimo Lim, the father of the taxi driver.Born in 1926 to Korean indentured servant parents in Cuba, Jeronimo Lim Kim becomes the first Korean to enroll in university in the same school and year as Fidel Castro.Full of youthful idealism and fervor, he dreams of an end to the systematic discrimination and stark poverty experienced by all Korean immigrants and, in the 1950s, thus joins the Cuban Revolution that promises equality for everyone. When the revolution succeeds, he becomes a government employee. He rises through the ranks, meeting Fidel Castro, Che Guevara as well as Barbarroja, the notorious head of the state intelligence agency, along the way.He also visits his now divided homeland, first North Korea in 1967 - likely on an undercover mission for the Cuban government - and then South Korea in 1995. The latter trip impact him greatly. By then long disillusioned with the unfulfilled aspirations of communism, Jerónimo returns to Cuba a changed man and dedicates the remaining years until his death to reconnecting to his roots. He rebuilds the Korean community, by now fragmented and dispersed all over the island, traveling to every town to conduct a census and establishing a shared sense of cultural identity, endeavors that, however, see both successes and failures.

Genre: Biography   Documentary   History