- As Hanoi prepares to host the second U.S.-North Korea summit later this month, experts say North Korea may be gearing up to study Vietnam’s model of economic development.
- Vietnam’s Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh went to Pyongyang on Tuesday following North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho’s visit to Hanoi last year.
- Vietnam’s ability to retain one-party rule, strict censorship, minimal dissent and a top-down system of control after integrating into the global economy is seen as an attractive prospect for the North.
According to a report by Nyshka Chandran on CNBC, as North Korea signals a willingness to open up its highly centralized, socialist economy, Vietnam’s model of development is being widely suggested as a blueprint for Pyongyang to emulate.
Hanoi’s ability to retain one-party rule, strict censorship, minimal dissent and a top-down system of control after integrating into the global economy is an attractive prospect for North Korea, according to analysts. If Pyongyang were to ever transition into a market economy, it will likely continue to prioritize regime stability — loosening restrictions on areas such as currency and migration could be politically destabilizing for Kim Jong Un’s rule.
To gauge lessons for its own future, North Korea has long studied communist governments such as China and Vietnam, countries with state-managed growth that have integrated into the world economy. As Hanoi prepares to host the second U.S.-North Korea summit in late February, experts believe Kim may be more inclined toward Vietnamese-style liberalization.
Vietnam’s Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh traveled to Pyongyang on Tuesday following North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho’s visit to Hanoi last year. That trip was reportedly aimed at studying Vietnam’s reforms, according to Yonhap News Agency. Such visits hark back to earlier years such as 2012, when a North Korean delegation visited the Vietnamese province of Thai Binh to examine rural development.
Just last month, Vietnam’s parliamentary chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan said her country was “willing to share an economic solution and know-how with North Korea,” reported South Korean newspaper Maeil Business at the time. Washington is in favor of the idea — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last July that Kim could enjoy an economic miracle akin to Vietnam’s if he wished.
Comparing similarities
In many ways, modern North Korea is equivalent to Vietnam in the 1980s, experts say. For one, the Communist Party of Vietnam has ruled the state ever since its independence in 1945 just as the Workers’ Party of Korea has always governed North Korea.
The two countries “were both under United Nations sanctions, in the case of North Korea, for developing nuclear weapons, and in the case of Vietnam, for occupying a foreign country,” the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, said in a recent note.
Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in 1978 effectively isolated it from the world, resulting in Hanoi being denied access to international financial support for nearly a decade. Similarly, Pyongyang has long been deemed a pariah state due to its clandestine weapons program.
Read full report on CNBC here.