The North Korean and North Vietnamese communists had long-standing ties.
Here s What You Need to Remember: Pyongyang still sees in Vietnam a model for its own aspirations to reunify the Korean peninsula. However, relations between the former allies have remained cool, particularly since Pyongyang failed to pay for a Vietnamese rice shipment in 1996.
In the year 2000, a visit by North Korea’s foreign minister to a cemetery in Bac Giang, Vietnam confirmed a long-rumored fact: dozens of North Korean pilots had dueled American Navy and Air Force pilots over the skies of Vietnam during the 1960s. And fourteen North Korean Air Force did not return alive.