On January 27, 1973, after five years of negotiations between the governments of Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, and the United States, the Paris Peace Accords were signed in Paris1. Following the agreement, the U.S troops withdrew out of Vietnam. Just over two years after the peace treaty was signed, on April 30, 1975, the South of Vietnam was defeated by the Communist North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese supporters of the communist, also known as the Viet Cong. Officially, in Vietnam, April 30, 1975 is called Reunification day. However, to many others, it was the day they lost their country to communism. David Luong is the interviewee for …show more content…
The war started after the country was divided into two, the North and the South, at the Seventeenth parallel in 1954. At the time, the leader of the North was Ho Chi Minh and the leader of the South was Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. The Geneva Conference was held in 1954 to settling issues amongst nations regarding the Korean War and the First Indochina War2. The meeting agreed to hold a democratic elections with an international supervisor in 1956 to select the leader of the Vietnam and unify the country. However, the meeting did not happen. Ho Chi Minh formed his Viet Minh communist union in a cave near China’s border, called Pác Bó in 1941, originally this union goal was to fight the Japanese. This resistant league were sent to the South secretly through Truong Son trail to train and aid the guerrillas preparing to attack the South’s government. They blended into the South civilian community and spread communism under good intentions. In the South, Ngo Dinh Diem, who was born and raised in a Roman Catholic family. He was strongly against not only communism, but also Buddhism. One of the world’s most famous protesting moments was the self immolation of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc. After the persecution of Buddhists, almost half of the country was averse to him. Ngo Dinh Diem was at first the interior minister of Emperor Bao Dai, and later was appointed to be Vietnam Prime Minister by the