The flag of the Viet Cong, adopted in 1960, is a variation on the flag of North Vietnam. Sometimes the lower stripe was green.
The Viet Cong was an epithet and umbrella term to call the communist-driven armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, it fought under the direction of North Vietnam against the South Vietnamese and United States governments during the Vietnam War. The organization had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized and mobilized peasants in the territory the Viet Cong controlled. During the war, communist fighters and some anti-war activists claimed that the Viet Cong was an insurgency indigenous to the South that represented the legitimate rights of people in South Vietnam, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of North Vietnam. It was later conceded by the modern Vietnamese communist leadership that the movement was actually under the North Vietnamese political and military leadership, aiming to unify Vietnam under a single banner.
North Vietnam established the National Liberation Front on December 20, 1960, at Tân Lập village in Tây Ninh Province to foment insurgency in the South. Many of the Viet Cong's core members were volunteer "regroupees", southern Viet Minh who had resettled in the North after the Geneva Accord (1954). Hanoi gave the regroupees military training and sent them back to the South along the Ho Chi Minh trail in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Viet Cong called for the unification of Vietnam and the overthrow of the American-backed South Vietnamese government. The Viet Cong's best-known action was the Tet Offensive, an assault on more than 100 South Vietnamese urban centers in 1968, including an attack on the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The offensive riveted the attention of the world's media for weeks, but also overextended the Viet Cong. Later communist offensives were conducted predominantly by the North Vietnamese. The organization officially merged with the Fatherland Front of Vietnam on February 4, 1977, after North and South Vietnam were officially unified under a communist government. (Full article...)
Image 2Water puppetry, lit. "Making puppets dance on water") is a tradition that dates back as far as the 11th century when it originated in the villages of the Red River Delta area of northern Vietnam.
Image 11Dong Ho painting is a line of Vietnamese folk painting originating in Đông Hồ village (Song Hồ commune, Thuận Thành District, Bắc Ninh Province.
... that wushu athlete Nguyễn Thúy Hiền was voted the best Vietnamese female athlete of the 20th century?
... that the owner of the bus service connecting the two largest Vietnamese-American communities in the United States was the target of an assassination plot by a competitor?
... that Lài dogs were instrumental in the Vietnamese Lam Sơn uprising against Ming China in 1418–1428?
... that copies of the underground anti-war publication Liberated Barracks were found on ships carrying US troops to Vietnam?
The following are images from various Vietnam-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 119th-century manuscript of "Mysterious tales of the Southern Realm" (Lĩnh Nam chích quái), a copy of 15th-century original tale. (from Culture of Vietnam)
Image 9A trio of Vietnamese musicians performing together. The man on the far left plays kèn đám ma, the man in the middle plays the đàn nhị and the man on the right plays the trống chầu. (from Culture of Vietnam)