X-Nico

11 unusual facts about North Vietnam


Archimedes Patti

Patti is famous for having worked closely with the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Vietnamese independence movement and future president of North Vietnam.

During his career in China and Southeast Asia Patti met Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Viet Minh and future leader and national hero of North Vietnam.

John Wheeldon

He strongly opposed the Vietnam War and (though no supporter of Communism) visited North Vietnam at the invitation of the North Vietnam peace committee, while Australia was involved in fighting in South Vietnam.

Math Ly

His father, Sos Man briefly served as the Minister of Religious Affairs under the Khmer Issarak movement in 1954 before defecting to North Vietnam between 1954 to 1970, bringing Math Ly along.

North Vietnam

North Vietnam refused to establish diplomatic relations with the non-aligned government of Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia and repeatedly denounced his regime as "revisionist" for rejecting Stalinism.

Rene Mederos

He travelled to both North and South Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh trail with the liberation forces, experiencing first-hand the brutal conditions of war and the courageous response of the Vietnamese people.

Route Package

A Route Package were the names given by the US Air Force and US Navy to describe areas of air operations over North Vietnam.

Vietnamese art

The highly developed Dong Son culture that flourished in North Vietnam (from about 1000 BC to the 4th century BC) was the civilization responsible for the world-famous Dong Son drums, a product of their advanced bronze-casting skills.

Vũ Kỳ

Vũ Kỳ (1921 - 2005) was the personal secretary to Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh.

War Crimes Act of 1996

The law criminalized breaches of the Geneva Conventions so that the United States could prosecute war criminals, specifically North Vietnamese soldiers who tortured U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War.

William Tuohy

He was there when the United States began bombing North Vietnam, and when the first US combat troops came ashore at Da Nang.


16th parallel north

After World War II, the parallel divided Vietnam into Chinese and British controlled zones; this eventually formed the Communist North Vietnam and the anti-communist South Vietnam.

1972 in the Vietnam War

In many ways, the struggle for An Lộc in 1972 was an important battle of the war, as South Vietnamese forces halted the North Vietnamese advance towards Saigon.

374th Airlift Wing

In the spring of 1972, after most American ground forces had been withdrawn, the North Vietnamese Communists launched a major offensive as they invaded South Vietnam during Easter.

Activism at Ohio Wesleyan University

A small minority had been concerned with the war for several years, but the bombing of North Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964 raised campus-wide awareness almost overnight.

American Community School in Saigon

Upon departure of U.S. military forces after the Paris Peace Accords, the facility became a new location for the existing Saigon Adventist Hospital, remaining such until April 1975, with the fall of Saigon to the military forces of North Vietnam.

Candy Jones

Again with the USO, Jones visited South Vietnam in 1970; she later suspected her visit had some connection to a disastrous attempt to free American prisoners of war from North Vietnam.

Chu Văn Tấn

He was a member of the 1st Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam and minister of defense in the 1945 provisional cabinet of the DRV.

Communist revolution

The First Indochina War that resulted in the defeat of the French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 1954, and brought the Communist Party of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh to power in North Vietnam.

Dale E. Stovall

A member of the 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron based in Thailand, on June 2, 1972, he recovered Maj. Roger Locher from deep inside North Vietnam, the furthest any airman was ever rescued from inside enemy lines.

Edward S. Herman

Herman and Chomsky challenged the veracity of media accounts of war crimes and repression by the Vietnamese communists, stating that "the basic sources for the larger estimates of killings in the North Vietnamese land reform were persons affiliated with the CIA or the Saigon Propaganda Ministry" and "the NLF-DRV 'bloodbath' at Hue in South Vietnam was constructed on flimsy evidence indeed".

Francine Parker

Parker's film debuted in 1972, the same week that actress Jane Fonda controversially visited Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam.

Gianh River

The 17th parallel used as the border between North Vietnam and South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975 was located just to the south, at the Bến Hải River in Quảng Trị Province.

Kit Bakke

Bakke went to Havana, Cuba, for eight days in July 1969 to meet with the members of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Provisional Revolutionary Government to discuss the opposition movements going on in the United States.

Martyn Finlay

In 1964, he argued during a parliamentary speech that the Viet Cong were the only effective opposition in South Vietnam, but still accepted the general consensus within New Zealand government circles that the Viet Cong were being supported by North Vietnam and the People's Republic of China.

Motives for spying

Threats can also be made against family or friends of the target—Svetlana Tumanova was told by the KGB that her family in the Soviet Union would be harmed if she did not co-operate, and Ronald Humphrey said that he had helped North Vietnam in order to obtain the release of his Vietnamese wife.

Names of Ho Chi Minh City

As noted, the now-official name commemorates North Vietnamese leader Hồ Chí Minh, who, although deceased by the time of the Fall of Saigon, was instrumental in the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Sybil Stockdale

He was present at the August 4, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, spent 7-1/2 years under torture as a POW in North Vietnam, later became President of The Citadel, and eventually ran for Vice-President of the United States with Ross Perot heading the ticket.

Tail gunner

On 18 December 1972, during Operation Linebacker II (also known as President Richard Nixon's, "Christmas Bombing"), USAF B-52 Stratofortresses of the Strategic Air Command conducted a maximum effort bombing campaign against North Vietnam.

Telford Taylor

Taylor regarded the 1972 bombing campaign targeting the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, as "senseless and immoral"; in December 1972, he visited Hanoi along with musician and activist Joan Baez and others, among them also the associate dean of the Yale Law School.

VMFA-333

It was during this deployment that the squadron got its only air to air kill when Major Lee T Lasseter, USMC along with his RIO, Capt. John D. Cummings shot down a MiG-21 over North Vietnam, near Hanoi.

Where Are You Now, My Son?

Included on the recording are the voices of Barry Romo, Michael Allen and human rights attorney Telford Taylor, with whom Baez made her famous 1972 visit to North Vietnam.

Worth the Fighting For

The book picks up where McCain's first memoir, Faith of My Fathers, left off, with his return to the United States following his release as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.