The Vietnamese people congratulate the DPRK leaders and people on their achievements in national construction and development. In his 2019 New Year address, Chairman Kim Jong Un stressed that one of the most pressing and most important tasks in socialist economic construction in 2019 is increasing production and improving the people’s standards of living. All economic sectors need to be accelerated in order to fulfil the targets of the five-year strategy for national economic development.
Concerning external relations, on the spirit of self-reliance, peace and friendship, the DPRK continues to unite and develop cooperative friendly relations with all countries friendly with the DPRK, contributing to the maintenance of peace, stability in the region and the world.
Since Vietnam and the DPRK established diplomatic relations in 1950, the traditional friendly relationship between the two countries, built up by President Ho Chi Minh and Chairman Kim Il-sung, has been continually nurtured by generations of leaders and the people of the two countries.
President Ho Chi Minh visited the DPRK in 1957. Many senior Party and State leaders of Vietnam have also visited the DPRK. Similarly, Chairman Kim Il-sung and many other senior DPRK leaders have visited Vietnam.
The two countries signed many important agreements on cooperation in culture, science-technology, trade and maritime cooperation, civil air transport. During the 1960s and 1970s, the DPRK helped Vietnam train hundreds of students. The DPRK’s Education Commission and Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training are pushing for the signing of an educational cooperation agreement. Since 2013, Vietnam has sent an art troupe to the DPRK once every two years to attend the April Spring Friendship Art Festival in Pyongyang.
Vietnam and the DPRK have a long history of engaging in cultural exchange. The two countries’ people supported and helped each other in their respective struggles for national liberation and national construction. Vietnam has affirmed its support for the DPRK’s efforts to develop its economy and improve the people’s standards of living while highly appreciating positive progresses on the Korean Peninsula and standing ready to make contributions to the dialogue process to establish long-term peace and peacefully resolve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.
With its serious efforts to host the second DPRK-US Summit in Hanoi, Vietnam has sent a message of always strongly supporting and actively contributing to the dialogue process in order to maintain peace, stability, cooperation and development on the Korean Peninsula as well as in the region and the world at large.
As 2018 marked 60 years since the first Vietnam visit by the late Chairman Kim Il-sung and the two countries will celebrate 70 years of diplomatic ties in 2020, Chairman Kim Jong Un’s official friendship visit to Vietnam marks a new historic milestone in the relationship between the two Parties and countries.
The visit is an opportunity for the two countries’ leaders to discuss the orientation and measures to promote the Vietnam-DPRK traditional friendly relationship, for the sake of the two countries’ peoples, for peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and the world at large.
