HO CHI MINH CITY — Vietnam’s top leader, To Lam, highlighted the importance of reforming the country as it celebrated the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.
On April 30th, 1975, communist forces took over Saigon, as Ho Chi Minh City was then known, effectively ending the two-decade-long war between Hanoi and the Washington-backed southern government. Vietnam calls the day the “Liberation of the South or Reunification day”; in the West, it is widely known as the “fall of Saigon.”