The Viet Cong was formed in 1960 to force the withdrawal of all foreign troops on Vietnamese soil.

In 1964, North Vietnamese troops were making forays into the south. South Vietnam was supported by USA. The turning point in the war came with the Tet (Chinese New Year) Offensive of 1968. Saigon was attacked by the Viet Cong. Mass devastation took place in the countryside.

On April 30, 1975, a North Vietnamese Army tank smashed through the gate to Saigon’s Presidential Palace, symbolizing the fall of South Vietnam.

Post-War Vietnam

The country then began the painful process of reunification and "reeducation". Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fled the country for the U.S and Europe. Cut off from the West economically, Vietnam suffered greatly.

In 1977, Vietnam entered the United Nations. At the end of the following year, the army invaded Cambodia, installing a pro-Hanoi government. But not without tremendous consequences. Even though Hanoi’s forces had taken Phnom Penh, it spent the next 10 years failing to crush the Khmer Rouge’s perpetual insurgency. The war drained Vietnam’s already shaky centralized economy.

The Vietnamese government began withdrawing its troops from Cambodia in 1989 and agreed in October 1991 to the Paris Peace Agreement that paved the way to the first free elections in Cambodia.