![\"north](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/vietnam-korea-pilots-e1552064659878.jpg\")
\nWar veteran Duong Van Dau walks between rows of headstones at a memorial for North Korean fallen pilots in Bac Giang province, Vietnam. (Hau Dinh\/AP )<\/p>\n
\nWar veteran Duong Van Dau walks between rows of headstones at a memorial for North Korean fallen pilots in Bac Giang province, Vietnam. (Hau Dinh\/AP )<\/p>\n
![\"MiG-15\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/mig15-e1552066503991.jpg\")
\nMiG-15<\/p>\n
Most have heard stories of Russian pilots in MiG 15’s dog-fighting Americans in their F-86 Saberjets south of the Yalu River, known as MiG Alley. Although the Soviet Union never acknowledged its participation in the conflict, many suspected it. Soviet pilots, though forbidden from communicating in any language other than basic Korean across their radios, often resorted to Russian when stressed or when swearing. This was picked up by American pilots. All reports of covert Soviet involvement were denied by the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
![\"F-86\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/F-86-Sabre-featured-image-e1552066606259.jpg\")
\nF-86<\/p>\n
Enter Viet Nam.<\/p>\n
\nBy Hau Dinh and Grant Peck Associated Press
\nBAC GIANG, Vietnam \u2014 In a rice field in northern Vietnam, 14 headstones are an enduring symbol of the wartime friendship of Vietnam and North Korea. They mark the original burial ground of North Korean pilots who died while secretly fighting alongside Vietnamese comrades against U.S. Air Force and Navy planes in the Vietnam War.<\/p>\nThe role of North Korea is a footnote in the sweeping history of that conflict, one that speaks mostly of the fraternal relations of two nations that separately fought bruising armed conflicts against the United States in the context of the Cold War. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they died, Vietnamese people treated them the same as Vietnamese martyrs who sacrificed for the country,\u201d Duong Van Dau, the caretaker of the memorial, said last week. On the high ground where the fallen pilots were interred, their tombs all face northeast, toward their homeland.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s role in the war is much better known. From 1964 to 1973, Seoul deployed more than 300,000 military personnel to help the U.S. effort in South Vietnam against the communists.<\/p>\n
By contrast, the North Korean air force contingent deployed near Hanoi in what was then called North Vietnam \u2014 the communist half of the war-torn Southeast Asian nation \u2014 had 200 to 400 personnel, including about 90 pilots over more than two years, according to postwar Vietnamese accounts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n
\nOnly in 2000-2001 was the participation of the North Korean pilots officially acknowledged by Hanoi and Pyongyang. Since then, there has been a trickle of additional details about North Korea\u2019s involvement in the Vietnam War, teased out mostly from Vietnamese memoirs and state press accounts and Eastern European diplomatic archives.<\/p>\n
What has also emerged is a revisionist view of North Korea\u2019s assistance, which suggests Pyongyang would have been happy to see Hanoi fight to the last Vietnamese.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nMiG-17<\/p>\nRead the rest of the article here: Digital Edition Chicago Tribune<\/a><\/p>\n
Hat tip to Poetrooper for the link. Thanks, Poe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
![\"mig-17\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/MiG-17-e1552066830427.jpg\")