Both
North and
South Korea lent material and manpower support to their respective ideological allies during the
Vietnam War, though the number of South Korean troops on the ground was larger. Then-South Korean president
Syngman Rhee had offered to send troops to Vietnam as early as 1954, but his proposal was turned down by the
U.S. Department of State; the first South Korean personnel to land in Vietnam, 10 years later, were non-combatants: ten
Taekwondo instructors, along with thirty-four officers and ninety-six enlisted men of a Korean Army hospital unit. estimated they killed 41,400 enemy fighters and 5,000 civilians. After the Vietnam war, there were thousands of children of mixed Korean and Vietnamese descent, called
Lai Dai Han, born of Korean workers or soldiers and local Vietnamese. involved the rape of Vietnamese Women by South Korean soldiers. In 2001, South Korean president
Kim Dae-jung expressed his sorrow that Korea had unintentionally inflicted pain upon the Vietnamese people during the Vietnam War. He also promised to continue supporting Vietnamese development. As stated by
Vietnamese president Trần Đức Lương in 2004: In 2009, South Korea and Vietnam agreed to lift the bilateral relationship to the “comprehensive partnership”. In 2003, readers of South Korean newspaper
Hankyoreh, which ran a series of articles exposing atrocities committed by South Korean troops during the war, donated over US$100,000 to set up a memorial park and peace museum in
Phú Yên Province. Former South Korean soldiers such as
Ahn Junghyo and
Hwang Sok-yong have also written novels about their experiences in Vietnam. In 2017,
Moon Jae-in apologised vaguely to Vietnam, although the issue was minimized by the Vietnamese media and South Korean media as it wasn't seen as an official apology, and South Korean civil groups and individuals have also taken a pro-active effort in reconciliation. In 2023, a South Korean court ruled in favor of a Vietnamese victim of South Korean atrocities during the war and ordered that the South Korean government compensate the surviving victim. In response, the South Korean government, via its President
Yoon Suk-Yeol, repeated its earlier denials of the atrocities, and the South Korean government later announced its appeal of the decision. This strained relations with Vietnam, as a spokesperson for Vietnam's foreign ministry called South Korea's repeated denials "extremely regrettable". and
Tô Lâm, meet in April 2026 President
Lee Jae Myung is critical of South Korean war crimes during the Vietnam War, even comparing them to the
Japanese atrocities in Korea. The South Korean President has reportedly planned to publicly address the issue with Vietnam, however, the Vietnamese side privately turned down Lee's intention, citing its greater emphasis on future collaborations instead of talking about the painful past. == ROKS Cheonan sinking ==