Educating Koreans about Che Guevara

By Richard Pennington

At Seoul's sprawling Dongdaemun Market, among the thousands of items on sale are T-shirts of Ernesto “Che” Guevara wearing a rakish black beret. I do not understand why he inspires such fascination. Here is a summary of this polarizing man who liked seven-inch cigars. But let me warn you―it's history and not hagiography.

Guevara, a native of Argentina, spent the last 15 years of his life fomenting revolution. He was one of Fidel Castro's key helpers in toppling the regime of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba and installing a harsh communist government. They marched into Havana on New Year's Day, 1959.

Within 18 months, Time magazine had put him on its cover ― flanked by Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev ― and called him “the brains of the revolution.” The New York Times was no less flattering. He spoke at the United Nations in December 1964 and thundered against the United States, warning that “the wheel of history” was turning and woe to those who got in the way. He was Hero No. 1 to every left-leaning college student from New Haven to Berkeley. My alma mater, the University of Texas, was not immune to all this Che-worship.

Guevara, killed while trying to cause a revolt in Bolivia, got more praise in 2004 when Robert Redford's movie The Motorcycle Diaries was released. Reviews were largely positive, the main exception being Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. He opined that political correctness governed the thinking of most reviewers: “It's not cool to be against Che Guevara.”

Ebert dared speak the truth, and I will back him up. To those ― young Koreans, for example ― who think Guevara was a swell guy, I offer a few facts. He was ruthless during and after the Cuban revolution. Most suspected informers, deserters or spies got a .32-caliber bullet in the head, and he was not afraid to pull the trigger himself.

Guevara, an ardent admirer of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, cared little about legal niceties. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary,” he once said. “These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail.” It was not just men but women and children as young as 14 who were summarily shot. Indeed, the entire Caribbean island became a killing field as death squads were sent out in all directions.

What about the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962? Castro and Guevara were livid when the Soviets agreed to remove their nukes in exchange for a similar U.S. action in Turkey. “If the missiles had remained, we would have used them against the very heart of America, including New York City,” Guevara claimed. “We will march the path of victory even if it costs millions of atomic victims.”

Castro put him in charge of Cuba's economy in the early 1960s, with woeful results. Guevara had no grasp of ― or patience for ― basic economic principles and made numerous impulsive, bone-headed decisions.

Although he is assumed to have had all the radical bona fides, Guevara once made crude and racist comments about the black people who make up such a large part of the Cuban population.

The self-styled revolutionary statesman also visited North Korea (he got on well with Kim Il-sung), and other far-left or rogue states. After his death in Bolivia in 1967, Guevara was honored in Cuba as Castro ordered three days of public mourning. A crowd of 1,000,000 gathered in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion to hear the Bearded One lament his comrade's passing.

In the summer, I visited a basement club in Gangnam called Cuba Bar where hip young people gather to hear bachata, salsa and meringue music. They dance and drink and have a fine time. Cuba Bar has two entrances, both of which feature the Cuban flag and the handsome visage of Guevara. Two more can be found on the walls downstairs.

The owner, Sean Kwon, spoke freely about his club: “We opened three years ago. Business is not good because of COVID, as you might expect. I wanted this place to have a foreign vibe, a cozy vibe. One way to do so was to make Che Guevara the face of our bar. I did it because I respect him.”

I informed Kwon about Guevara's background as a killer, a racist and a friend of Kim Il-sung. “I didn't know that,” he said. “I really didn't know, and I doubt most of the people who come to Cuba Bar would know. But a comparison is that even though we are living in a capitalistic society, it does not mean we like Trump or agree with him.”

I did not expect him to remove the face of Guevara (who, after all, played second fiddle to Castro in Cuba) which is featured so prominently at the club. He said he has no such plans.

Richard Pennington (raput76@gmail.com), a native of Texas in the U.S., works as an editor at a law firm in southern Seoul. He has written 22 nonfiction books, including "Travels of an American-Korean, 2008-2013." He is the director of an NGO, the Committee to Bring Jikji Back to Korea.