DPRK – Vietnam. Brotherhood in Arms (From the History of the Vietnam War)

ЮГО-ВОСТОЧНАЯ АЗИЯ: АКТУАЛЬНЫЕ ПРОБЛЕМЫ РАЗВИТИЯ, 2026, №1(70), 334-343

 
Annotation: The article examines the participation of North Korean military personnel in providing aid to North Vietnam from 1967 to 1969. This vibrant, but for a long time (until 2000) unpublicized chapter in bilateral relations became possible as a result of the preceding stage of a rather lengthy rapprochement and cooperation between Pyongyang and Hanoi, in which the personal friendship established between the leaders and founders of the two states, Kim Il Sung and Ho Chi Minh, played a fundamental role. Their personal meetings during the official visit of Ho Chi Minh, Chairman of the Workers' Party of Vietnam, to Pyongyang on July 8-12, 1957, and the return visits of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung to Hanoi on November 28-December 2, 1958, and in November 1964, further strengthened this relationship. During the Vietnam War, the potential for bilateral cooperation between Hanoi and Pyongyang became important, but it was only one element in the emerging broad anti-American coalition of the USSR-China-DRV-DPRK, which ultimately led to the defeat of the United States in Indochina. Korean pilots arrived in Vietnam in 1967 – at the most difficult moment, when the United States was trying to fulfill its strategic maxim of "bombing Vietnam back to the Stone Age", as articulated by Air Force General Curtis LeMay. However, the US Air Force's large-scale and prolonged Operation Rolling Thunder failed to achieve its objectives, largely due to the skill and heroism of the Korean pilots who carried out Kim Il Sung's order to "defend the skies of Vietnam as their own". Fourteen of them gave their lives for the freedom of the Vietnamese people. Vietnamese sources vary in their descriptions of the detachment as comprising 200 personnel, including 86 pilots, or 384 personnel, including 96 pilots at the height of the conflict. The brotherhood of arms between North Korean and North Vietnamese soldiers, forged in blood during the Vietnam War, has become one of the cornerstones of friendship between the SRV and the DPRK today.

Keywords: brotherhood of arms, DRV, SRV, DPRK, Vietnam War, military aid, combat pilots