Vietnam to Build Memorial to North Korean War Dead Outside Hanoi

Vietnam’s government plans to build a memorial to the North Korean soldiers who perished during the Vietnam War, state media announced this week, casting a rare light on the country’s role in the conflict.

According to a Reuters report that cited Quan Doi Nhan Dan, a newspaper published by the Ministry of Defense, the memorial project was discussed at a meeting chaired by Deputy Defense Minister Nguyen Truong Thang ​in Hanoi on Monday. Also in attendance was North Korean ​Ambassador Ri Sung Guk.

“The ⁠Party, State, people, and People’s Army of Vietnam always cherish and remember the effective assistance of North Korea and the sacrifices of North Korean martyrs in its struggle ​for national independence ​in the ⁠past,” Quan Doi Nhan Dan quoted Thang as saying, according to the news agency.

The memorial will be built at an existing ⁠cemetery for North Korean ​“martyrs” in the northern province of Bac Ninh outside Hanoi, the report said. The cemetery contains headstones commemorating 14 North Korean pilots, including two officers, who were sent to support the North Vietnamese air force during its war against the U.S.-backed South Vietnam in the 1960s. The headstones face northeast, in the direction of Korea. The cemetery is also set to be refurbished under the Defense Ministry’s plans.

The downed pilots were part of a group of around 100 that North Korea dispatched to North Vietnam to train their Vietnamese counterparts in the mid-1960s. One Vietnamese veteran told VnExpress in 2019 that the pilots were then invited to “fight alongside Vietnamese soldiers.”

They flew Soviet-made MiG-17 jets in combat missions ​against U.S. aircraft during the late 1960s, and the 14 North Korean pilots were killed between September 1965 and early 1968, according to a state media report.

The airmen were among the estimated 1,000 North Koreans who were secretly sent to North Vietnam between 1966 and 1971. They included mechanics, support personnel, psyops specialists, and engineers.

For years, the role of the North Korean army in the Vietnam War was veiled in secrecy. While the DPRK supplied North Vietnam with military and political support during the war, including by sending North Korean military advisers to the country, it wasn’t until 2000 that a Vietnam official openly admitted that North Koreans had played an active part in the conflict. North Korean state media only officially confirmed its involvement in 2001, saying that the country had sent weapons, ammunition, and 2 million sets of uniforms.

The decision to actively support North Vietnam was made in 1965, and endorsed by a meeting of the ruling Workers Party the following year. Before the pilots’ departure to North Vietnam, President Kim Il Sung told them “to fight thinking of Vietnam’s sky as your own sky, Hanoi as Pyongyang and Ho Chi Minh as your own leader.”

The North Korean admission took place shortly before Kim Yong Nam, then North Korea’s second-most-senior leader, visited Vietnam in July 2001, during which he paid his respects at the cemetery in Bac Ninh. The remains of the dead pilots were then repatriated to ​North Korea in 2002, but the headstones remain in place, facing northeast – the direction of Korea – alongside a memorial marker that reads, “Here used to lie 14 North Korean comrades.”

The North Korean contribution to the communist cause in Vietnam paled in comparison to South Korea’s support for the southern Republic of Vietnam. In total, around 320,000 South Koreans fought alongside U.S. troops to defend the south, and more than 5,000 died.

The North Koreans dispatched to Vietnam never came into direct contact with their South Korean brethren, but psychological warfare personnel targeted South Koreans with communist propaganda and anti-American leaflets. “South Korean soldiers in Vietnam! Seek hundred, thousand vengeances against the American imperialist aggressors!” read one.

Despite their wartime cooperation, relations between Hanoi and Pyongyang grew chilly in late 1978, when Vietnam invaded Khmer Rouge-ruled Cambodia, another recipient of North Korean aid. The relationship was then further damaged when Vietnam established diplomatic ties with South Korea in 1992.