Koreans in Vietnam
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 83,640 (2011) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Ho Chi Minh City | 53,000 |
| Đồng Nai Province | 10,000 |
| Bình Dương Province | 8,000 |
| Hanoi | 6,300 |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Korean diaspora | |
Koreans in Vietnam is a community of Vietnam with a population of Korean expatriates along with Vietnamese citizens of Korean ancestry. The population initially came in a military capacity, fighting on both sides of the Vietnam War. After the end of the war, there was little Korean migration or tourism in Vietnam, until the rise of the South Korean economy and the decline of the North resulted in an influx of South Korean investors and North Korean defectors, as well as South Korean men seeking Vietnamese wives. As of 2011, according to statistics of South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, they numbered roughly eighty thousand people, making them the second-largest Korean diaspora community in Southeast Asia, after the Korean community in the Philippines, and the tenth-largest in the world. A more recent estimate from Vietnam Television says their population might be as large as 130,000.
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. In total, between 1965 and 1973, 312,853 South Korean soldiers fought in Vietnam; According to Korean sources, they killed 41,400 North Vietnamese Army soldiers and 5,000 civilians. There were cases of war atrocities in which those that were revealed during the war were promptly investigated with the perpetrators punished.However, controversy still remains as there are more alleged crimes that may not have been revealed. There were also thousands of children of mixed Korean and Vietnamese descent.
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