WASHINGTON - In 1986, when William Brown, a onetime U.S. intelligence official and government economist, was stationed in Seoul, he ran into a Vietnamese delegation at the Plaza Hotel. They were in town for the Asian Games.
Once the delegation learned Brown was an American official, “they immediately became formal and, as if they had approved diplomatic instructions” told Brown they were very impressed with how the U.S. had built up Seoul and said their government wanted to bury the hatchet with Washington so the U.S. could do the same for Vietnam. “They wanted Hanoi to look like Seoul,” recalled Brown, now an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
“They had it all wrong,” Brown told VOA Korean, adding that he told the Vietnamese that while the U.S. had helped, “the hotel and everything that they could see in Seoul skyline was South Korea’s effort and productivity, not American.”
The exchange took place during the year that Hanoi undertook its “doi moi” liberalization policy to reform Vietnam’s economy. Doi moi means renovation in Vietnamese.
Since then, Vietnam has improved relations with the U.S. and opened its economy to the international community, and now enjoys economic prosperity.
Vietnam’s changed economy will be part of the backdrop for President Donald Trump’s second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un which is set to take place in Hanoi, Vietnam on Feb. 27 and 28. The leaders first met in June in Singapore, a meeting widely criticized for vague results.
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The economic path that Vietnam took has been widely touted as a that North Korea should follow even before Trump announced it as the summit venue. But the announcement has rekindled questions about how Hanoi’s lessons could be relevant to the reclusive country built on “,” the ideology of self-sufficiency rooted in socialism.
When U.S. Secretary of State was visiting Hanoi last July, he suggested North Korea should follow Vietnam’s economic path.
“In light of the once-unimaginable prosperity and partnership we have with Vietnam today, I have a message for Chairman Kim Jong Un,” said Pompeo.
“President Trump believes your country can replicate this path. It’s yours if you’ll seize the moment. The miracle could be yours; it can be your miracle in North Korea as well,” he said.
The choice of Vietnam as the location of the second summit carries political and economic symbolism for both Washington and Pyongyang, according to experts.
“Vietnam embodies the future the United States hopes that North Korea embraces,” said Troy Stangarone, senior director of the Korea Economic Institute, because it was “a former adversary who has transitioned to a friend of the United States and undertaken economic reform.”
For North Korea, Brown said Vietnam is “a model that Kim would like to promote” because it is a country that defeated the U.S., unified North and South under a Communist government if not a Communist economy, and is now a friend of its former enemy.”
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, suggested “it may just be logical convenience that explains the choice of venue” for the summit.
O’Hanlon, however, believes that “the general model [of the Vietnamese economy] is of huge relevance” to North Korea.
Andray Abrahamian, a Korea expert at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, agrees.
“There is much that Vietnam has done that could be applied to North Korea,” said Abrahamian, who is an advisor to , a non-profit with offices in Singapore and Vietnam that trains North Koreans in economic policy and entrepreneurship.
Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world before its reform, but now the country reported a gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018 which is double the 3.40 GDP growth rate of the U.S. in the same year. A country’s indicates its monetary value of final goods and services produced and its economic well-being.
By comparison, North Korea’s economy in recent years is similar to Vietnam’s economy in 1985, a year before it embarked on the doi moi route to reform. , Vietnam’s GDP per person was 1 percent of America’s in 1985, and North Korea was in an identical position relative to America in 2015.