Improving relations with the United States
A highly placed Korean government official suggested that North Korea may tread the path used by the Vietnamese government. According to popular Korean-language daily, Dong-A Ilbo, this morning. The government official suspected that Chairman Kim is following the Vietnamese leaders who normalized diplomatic relations with the United States while still maintaining the communist political system.
However, he said that tin the case of North Korea there are many complicated political dynamics involved in the idea.
Viet Nam had a hard war with the United States like North Korea during the Korean War (1950-3), but Viet Nam signed a peace agreement with the US after the war ended—and pursued a market economy policy.
In 2015 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of normalization of diplomatic relations between the US and Viet Nam, President Nguyen Phu Trong visited the US and at the invitation of the then President Barack Obama, and declared: “We have transformed ourselves to friends from enemies.”
Many Koreans believe that Chairman Kim of North Korea might have chosen Viet Nam as a model of transformation of North Korea to one patterned after the Vietnamese formula.