Medical science cooperation between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea: The case of the Kinh lac theory

Abstract

In recent years, studies on the socialist system have experienced an important shift. Instead of focusing only on large socialist countries such as the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia in Europe and China in Asia, scholars have increasingly paid more attention to other socialist countries such as North Korea or Vietnam, especially to the efforts of these countries in asserting their independent and proactive position in the socialist system, instead of just being dependent and passive states following the path of large socialist countries (1). This article follows that direction by studying the cooperative relationship and experience sharing between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (2) and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (3) in the 1960s in the field of medicine. This is an underrating aspect that received little attention of the scholarly community, mainly because the sources of documents related to North Korea in general and medical research cooperation between Vietnam and North Korea in particular are still very limited.