And today, in 2021, someone living in South Korea can criticize the government. Does someone in Vietnam have the same right/privilege/ability?

Have fun if you're Christian:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Vietnam

Yes, I know, and South Koreans had to fight ~40 years after the Korean War to gain that right. That's the point I'm trying to make: a war is never about good guys beating bad guys, and when it ends nobody goes home as a victor and lives happily ever after.

South Korea literally wouldn’t exist today without UN intervention.

True, and North Korea current poverty is totally made by the international sanctions lead by the US. Vietnam is a great example that a communist country can open slowly if not bullied into a antagonistic position by the US.

Do not defend communism, man... you have too many history records to know it is a failure in all senses: poverty and lack of freedom.

For the record, China and Vietnam is not what I would call communist. That is more North Korea or Cuba. In Vietnam even foreigners can buy property already nowadays. I do not recall the exact conditions but I know people who did it. It is a capitalist system, actually. With a lot of control sometimes, but with market rules.

It is not about the sanctions. It is the system chosen. Everyone that has intellectual honesty knows that. There is a lot of literature about the problem of economic calculation in socialism systems proved by how russians did theirs, for example (black markets and copying countries budgets, the U.S. army compared to the russian one is an example of such a thing).

And do not make me started on the repression, that is the worst part. But all go hand in hand at the end.

Vietnam is developing, and I am glad it is. But what they are doing is not communism at all, do not sell us that. I have been living there for almost 10 years and I hope I can come back. It is a lovely country.

"Everyone that has intellectual honesty knows that"

If we are into intellectual honesty, then North Korea does not match any features of Socialism or Communism I've ever read or heard of.

Tt is a totalitarian absolute monarchy bordering on "worship god emperror"

South Korea started growing rapidly by the beginning of the 1960's and its economic growth has been consistent regardless of the political regime [^1]. What has been consistent was a significantly different economic system than the North, which would certainly not have survived unification after a North Korean victory. Military spending can't explain the disparity between the North and South as China had similar economic performance and consistently lower aggregate per capita spending than the North.

Vietnam, on the other hand, only really began to reform its economy after the collapse of the soviet union. If anything, North Vietnam's victory emboldened communist leaders in the aftermath of the war.

1:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_on_the_Han_River

South Korea was fortunate in that its second dictator, despite being an utterly despicable human shitbag, had a knack for economic development (or maybe he had good economic aides - I don't know). However, its 60s economic system was about as capitalist as 90s China - it was built upon massive government projects to boost export, allocated to large corporations, and the government repressed wages and crushed labor unions so that these corporations could stay competitive.

In fact there were strong parallels to the Soviet economic plans, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plans_of_South_Korea

vs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_the_Soviet_...

There has been a lot of studies into the economic performance of south korea and the other asian tigers compared to latin american countries that had similar levels of economic development after WWII and one commonality is the inability of government subsidies to influence export success. A product exported on the global market by a country desperate for foreign investment probably doesn't have the means to gain a competitive advantage through direct capital investment or subsidies.

Of course, a country can always be competitive by keeping wages low (probably artificially low in south korea) but I think south korea and the other asian tigers got a lot of things right that aren't comparable to how mainland china approached economic reform.

Besides being of a duration of five years there isn't a lot in common the economic planning of the soviet union and south korea in the aftermath of the Korean war. The soviet union's plans controlled the allocation of almost every resource and good in the economy and its ultimate price. South Korea's planning was mostly limited to guiding government investment and lacked the policy levers available to Gosplan.

How is this being downvoted? This site is incredible.