For Vietnamese, the Trump-Kim summit is a celebration of the country’s post-war progress
- Some 2 million civilians and 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters were killed between 1954 and 1975
- Today, Vietnam is among the fastest-growing economies in Asia, with growth of more than 7 per cent last year
After his capture while fighting for the communists during the Vietnam war, Nguyen Duc Gan endured four years of brutal captivity in a POW camp run by the US-allied South Vietnamese.
Today, Nguyen, 72, holds no grudge against the Americans. In fact, he is excited to welcome President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to Hanoi for their second summit on denuclearisation this week.
“I read newspapers and US media does not like him, but I find Trump to be a great man,” says Nguyen, who was rounded up in Saigon in 1968 during the Tet Offensive, which marked a turning point in the war in favour of the North Vietnamese.
For many Vietnamese, the summit is a chance to showcase their country not only as a vibrant economy that escaped the shadow of war and international isolation, but a peace broker that turned its old enemy, the US, into a friend.
“Our nation’s destiny used to be decided in meeting overseas like in Geneva but now we are happy to see Hanoi be a neutral city for peace and stability,” says Nguyen, referring to the 1954 Geneva Accords which saw the end of French rule in Vietnam but resulted in the division that led to the Vietnam war.
Hanoi and Washington normalised relations in 1995, two decades after the Democratic Republic of Vietnam launched a successful invasion to reunify with the US-backed South.
Some 2 million civilians and 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters were killed in fighting between 1954 and 1975, according to Vietnamese government estimates. Up to 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and more than 58,000 American troops lost their lives, according to US figures.
