Title: Vietnam After the War | Asia Pacific Curriculum
Headings: Vietnam After the War
Vietnam After the War
Overview
Prologue: The End of the “American War”
Introduction: The Challenges of Reconciliation
Background: The Road to War and Partition
Consolidating Political Control
Building a Socialist Economy
Resistance and Escape
Putting Post-War Vietnam in Context
Doi Moi and the “New” New Vietnam
Vietnamese Youth: Writing the Next Chapter
Acknowledgement

Content: The fall of Saigon in 1975 paved the way for the long-awaited reunification of Vietnam. But reconciliation—“healing the wounds and divisions of a society in the aftermath of sustained violence”—was a bigger challenge. 5 One thing standing in the way of reconciliation was the North Vietnamese government’s deep suspicion of many people in the south and their doubts about southerners’ loyalty to the communist regime. As will be discussed later, its approach to building a sense of loyalty was often heavy-handed and often had the effect of alienating people rather than winning them over. The story of Vietnam after the war can be told from many different perspectives. Here, we focus on one of those perspectives: that of the southerners who were made to feel that their lives before 1975 were a crime that needed to be punished, or a sin for which they needed to atone. We look at how they responded to life under a new system; some adapted, some found safe ways to resist, and some decided that their best or only hope was to leave to make a new life elsewhere. We also look at the dramatic changes that have taken place in Vietnam since economic reforms were introduced in 1986— changes that, according to recent surveys, have made Vietnam one of the most optimistic societies in the world.