North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho visited Vietnam last week, His host expressed willingness to share socio-economic development experience
Vietnam, a fast-growing country that’s liberal on trade and has friends in multiple countries, is offering to help advance North Korea, a fellow communist state that’s impoverished as well as distrusted by the West.
Vietnamese deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh said his country was “ready to share” with North Korea its socio-economic development and nation-building experience, Viet Nam News reported Friday.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho visited the Southeast Asian country from Thursday to Sunday.
The host’s offer probably means teaching North Korea to prosper economically under existing authoritarian rule, experts believe.
“The Kim regime expresses interest in Vietnam’s development experience because the country managed to realize reform and rapid economic growth while maintaining one-party rule,” said Leif-Eric Easley, international studies professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
Lessons to teach
Vietnam’s government and Communist Party are “willing to work with (North Korea) to promote exchanges and cooperation in all fields,” Minh said, as quoted by the party’s official website Nhan Dan.
Vietnamese media outlets did not elaborate on how the two sides would cooperate but hinted at future exchanges.
The Southeast Asian state would have its economic expansion to share. Growth in Vietnam is one of the fastest in Asia with GDP in the first half of this year expanding about 7 percent after several years of near 6 percent growth. The Asian Development Bank estimates 7.1 percent growth for the full year.
Vietnam, like China, began opening to foreign investment in the late 1980s.
