The flag of South Vietnam was first introduced by the

Provisional Central Government of Vietnam The Provisional Central Government of Vietnam was an entity proclaimed in Vietnam during the First Indochina War. It was created as a transitional government replacing the protectorates of Tonkin (Northern Vietnam) and Annam (Central Vietnam), u ...

, later served as the national flag of the State of Vietnam (known as "South Vietnam" after 1954), and its successor, the

Republic of Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of t ...

(South Vietnam) from 1948 to 1975 until the

fall of Saigon The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese or Liberation of the South by the Vietnamese government, and known as Black April by anti-communist overseas Vietnamese was the capture of Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, t ...

. The design consists of a yellow background with three red horizontal stripes through the middle. It is used to represent the "Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom Flag". The flag was designed by Lê Văn Đệ in 1948. The flag consists of a yellow field and three horizontal red stripes, and can be explained as emblematic of the common blood running through northern, central, and southern Vietnam. Although South Vietnam ceased to exist in 1975, the flag still finds use among private citizens in other countries and is still shown and used overseas by some Vietnamese emigrés, particularly in North America and Australia. Since June 2002, several American governmental bodies adopted resolutions recognizing the former flag as "Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom Flag."States and Localities Recognizing the Vietnamese Freedom and Heritage Flag
Quoc Ky Vietnam
A Map and List of state and city legislation recognizing the Freedom and Heritage Flag
Retrieved 7 August 2013Vietnamese American Television:
List of states and cities that recognize the Vietnam Freedom and Heritage Flag
Retrieved 7 August 2013 Both North Vietnam and South Vietnam ceased to exist when they unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

History

South Vietnamese Soldier Riding the Horse Trampling the Viet Cong Flag

Nguyễn dynasty

During the reign of Emperor Gia Long (1802–1820), the yellow flag was also used as the symbol of the Empire of Vietnam. This was continued as the Emperor's flag when the Court of

Huế Huế () is the capital of Thừa Thiên Huế province in central Vietnam and was the capital of Đàng Trong from 1738 to 1775 and of Vietnam during the Nguyễn dynasty from 1802 to 1945. The city served as the old Imperial City and admi ...

became a French protectorate. Later the flag added a red bend on two sides. After the deportation and exile of the Emperors Thành Thái and Duy Tân, the new pro-French puppet emporer

Khải Định Khải Định (; chữ Hán: 啓定; born Nguyễn Phúc Bửu Đảo; 8 October 1885 – 6 November 1925) was the 12th emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty in Vietnam, reigning from 1916 to 1925. His name at birth was Prince Nguyễn Phúc Bửu Đ� ...

introduced new imperial flag as a yellow flag with single horizontal band of red, following the

Imperial Order of the Dragon of Annam The Imperial Order of the Dragon of Annam (, , ; french: Ordre impérial du Dragon d'Annam, Ordre du Dragon Vert) was created in 1886 in the city of Huế, by Emperor Đồng Khánh of the Imperial House of Annam, upon the "recommendation" of t ...

. Formally known as the "", the flag was the official flag of the Nguyễn Court. In 1945 with the French ousted by Japan, Prime Minister

Trần Trọng Kim Trần Trọng Kim (Chữ Nôm: ; 1883 – December 2, 1953), courtesy name Lệ Thần, was a Vietnamese scholar and politician who served as the Prime Minister of the short-lived Empire of Vietnam, a state established with the support of Impe ...

of the newly restored Empire of Vietnam adopted another variant of the yellow flag. It included three red bands but the middle band was broken to form the . Derived from the

trigrams Trigrams are a special case of the ''n''-gram, where ''n'' is 3. They are often used in natural language processing for performing statistical analysis of texts and in cryptography for control and use of ciphers and codes. Frequency Context ...

, Quẻ Ly is the third of the Bát Quái (the Eight Trigrams – Ba gua): Càn (乾), Đoài (兌), Ly (離), Chấn (震), Tốn (巽), Khảm (坎), Cấn (艮), Khôn (坤). It was chosen to symbolize the

sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition point, flames a ...

, light, and civilization. And most importantly, it represents the southern lands under the "Later Heaven" order, that is Vietnam. This flag was used briefly from June to August 1945 when Emperor Bảo Đại abdicated.

Provisional Central Government of Vietnam and the State of Vietnam

On 2 June 1948, the Prime Minister of the

, Brigadier General

Nguyễn Văn Xuân Nguyễn Văn Xuân (3 April 1892 – 14 January 1989) was president of the government of Cochinchina from 1947 to 1948, then prime minister of the Provisional Central Government of Vietnam from 23 May 1948 to 20 June 1949, during the First Ind ...

, signed the decree with the specifications for the Vietnamese National Flag as follows: "The national emblem is a flag of yellow background, the height of which is equal to two-thirds of its width. In the middle of the flag and along its entire width, there are three horizontal red bands. Each band has a height equal to one-fifteenth of the width. These three red bands are separated from one another by a space of the band's height." The new national flag was raised for the first time on 5 June 1948 on a boat named ''Dumont d'Urville'' outside of

Hạ Long Bay Hạ Long Bay or Halong Bay ( vi, Vịnh Hạ Long, ) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and popular travel destination in Quảng Ninh Province, Vietnam. The name Hạ Long means "descending dragon". Administratively, the bay belongs to Hạ Lon ...

during the signing of the Halong Bay Agreements (''Accords de la baie d’Along'') by High Commissioner Emile Bollaert and Nguyễn Văn Xuân.Réalités vietnamiennes (Les réalités permanentes), Saigon, 1969, p. 52 (in French). A detailed design of the flag appeared on the newspaper on 3 June 1948, and again on the next day (with correction to the flag ratio). The residents of Hanoi were requested to display the flag at their home on 5 June 1948 to celebrate the Hạ Long Bay event. When the former Emperor Bảo Đại was made

chief of state A head of state (or chief of state) is the public persona who officially embodies a state Foakes, pp. 110–11 " he head of statebeing an embodiment of the State itself or representatitve of its international persona." in its unity and l ...

in 1949, this design was adopted as the flag of the State of Vietnam. The three red bands have the divination sign of ''Quẻ Càn'', the first of the Eight Trigrams mentioned above. Quẻ Càn represents heaven. Based on the traditional worldview of the Vietnamese people, Quẻ Càn also denotes the South (as of the "Earlier Heaven" order), the Vietnamese Nation, Vietnamese people, and the people's power. Another interpretation places the three red bands as symbols of the three regions of Vietnam: North, Central, and South.

Republic of Vietnam and later

With the foundation of the republic in 1955, the flag was adopted by the successor state, the

(more commonly known as South Vietnam). It was the national flag for the entire duration of that state's existence (1955–1975) from the First Republic to the Second Republic. With the capitulation of Saigon on 30 April 1975, the Republic of Vietnam came to an end and the flag ceased to exist as a state symbol. Afterwards, it has been adopted by many in the Vietnamese diaspora to symbolically distance themselves from the Communist government and continues to be used either as an alternative symbol for ethnic unity or as a protest tool against the current government.

Political significance

The flag of the former South Vietnam is popular with the case of

Vietnamese American Vietnamese Americans ( vi, Người Mỹ gốc Việt, lit=Viet-origin American people) are Americans of Vietnamese ancestry. They make up about half of all overseas Vietnamese and are the fourth-largest Asian American ethnic group after Chinese ...

Vietnamese Australian }) are Australians of Vietnamese ancestry. Vietnamese Australians are one of the largest groups within the global Vietnamese diaspora. At the 2021 census, 334,781 people stated that they had Vietnamese ancestry (whether alone or in combination w ...

s, and other Vietnamese around the world who fled Vietnam after the war, who call it the "Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom Flag", and they started the movement to struggle for recognitions for their political identity. In the United States, few Vietnamese immigrants of that time period use the current

flag of Vietnam The flag of Vietnam, officially the National Flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (), or (), also (), was designed in 1940 and used during an uprising against the French in southern Vietnam that year. The red background symbolizes revolut ...

, which many of them consider offensive. Instead, they prefer to use the flag of South Vietnam in its place. The same is true for

Vietnamese Canadians Vietnamese Canadians ( vi, Người Canada gốc Việt; french: Canadiens vietnamiens) are Canadian citizens of Vietnamese ancestry. As of 2016, there are 240,615 Vietnamese Canadians, most of whom reside in the provinces of Ontario, British ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, Vietnamese Germans in

western Germany The old states of Germany (german: die alten Länder) is a jargon referring to the ten of the sixteen states of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) that were part of West Germany and that unified with the eastern German Democratic Republic' ...

, for Vietnamese in the Netherlands, France, Norway and the United Kingdom, and for

s in Australia for that time period as well.

Official recognition

*In 1965, the South Vietnamese flag's design was incorporated into the

Vietnam Service Medal The Vietnam Service Medal is a military award of the United States Armed Forces established on 8 July 1965 by order of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The medal is awarded to recognize service during the Vietnam War by all members of the U.S. Arm ...

which was created by President Lyndon Johnson and designed by

Thomas Hudson Jones Thomas Hudson Jones (July 24, 1892 – November 4, 1969) was a U.S. sculptor for the Army's Institute of Heraldry. Biography Jones was born in Buffalo, New York. His father was an engraver and encouraged him from childhood to be a sculptor. He a ...

and Mercedes Lee. *In 2003, the Virginian state government rejected a bill that would've recognized the South Vietnamese flag. * From 2002 onward, the lobbying efforts of Vietnamese Americans resulted in the state governments of Virginia, Hawaii, Georgia, Colorado, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio, California, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Michigan recognizing it as the symbol of the Vietnamese American Community. Also, at least 15 counties and 85 cities in 20 states have also adopted similar resolutions. * In early 2008,

Jason Kenney Jason Thomas Kenney (born May 30, 1968) is a Canadian former politician who served as the 18th premier of Alberta from 2019 until 2022 and the leader of the United Conservative Party (UCP) from 2017 until 2022. He also served as the member of ...

Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship The minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship (french: Ministre de l'immigration, des réfugiés et de la citoyenneté) is a minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet. The minister is responsible for Immigration, Refugees and Citi ...

, posted an announcement on his website, declaring that the Canadian government recognized the flag of the Republic of Vietnam as the symbol of the

Vietnamese-Canadian Vietnamese Canadians ( vi, Người Canada gốc Việt; french: Canadiens vietnamiens) are Canadian citizens of Vietnamese ancestry. As of 2016, there are 240,615 Vietnamese Canadians, most of whom reside in the provinces of Ontario, British C ...

community. Further, he declared that "attempts to disparage

he flag He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

are a deeply troubling attack on one of Canada's ethnic communities and on the principles of multiculturalism." In May 2008, he made a speech at an Army of the Republic of Vietnam rally, lending support to the program. * From 2015 onward in Australia, the City Councils of Maribyrnong, Greater Dandenong, Yarra, Fairfield, Port Adelaide Enfield, and Brimbank, respectively, have passed motions recognizing the "Cờ Vàng" Vietnamese Heritage Flag. * The red Vietnamese flag has its own flag emoji, whilst the yellow flag is only seen in private usage and does not have its own emoji.

Controversies

* When a Vietnamese American video tape store owner displayed the current flag of Vietnam and a photo of

Ho Chi Minh (: ; born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as (' Uncle Hồ'), also known as ('President Hồ'), (' Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as P ...

in front of his store in

Westminster, California Westminster is a city in northern Orange County, California, known for its many Vietnamese refugees who immigrated to the city during the 1980s. They settled largely in Little Saigon, and the city is known as the "capital" of overseas Vietnam ...

, in 1999, a month-long protest against it climaxed when 15,000 people held a candlelight vigil one night, sparking the

Hi-Tek incident The Hi-Tek incident, referred to in Vietnamese-language media as the Trần Trường incident ( vi, Vụ Trần Trường or vi, label=none, Sự kiện Trần Trường), was a series of protests in 1999 by Vietnamese Americans in Little Sa ...

(Hi-Tek was the name of the store). * A faux pas by the

United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...

in using the current Vietnamese flag in a brochure to represent the Vietnamese American community that it serves caused outrage among Vietnamese Americans and resulted in an apology. * In 2004, many Vietnamese American students at the

California State University, Fullerton California State University, Fullerton (CSUF or Cal State Fullerton) is a public university in Fullerton, California. With a total enrollment of more than 41,000, it has the largest student body of the 23-campus California State University (CSU) ...

threatened to walk out on their graduation ceremony when the university chose to use the current flag of Vietnam to represent its Vietnamese students. The Vietnamese American students demanded that the university use the former flag of South Vietnam instead. This resulted in the university scrapping all foreign flags for the ceremony. * In 2006, Vietnamese-American students at the

University of Texas at Arlington The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA or UT Arlington) is a public research university in Arlington, Texas. The university was founded in 1895 and was in the Texas A&M University System for several decades until joining the University of ...

protested against the use of the Vietnamese flag in the Hall of Flags in

Nedderman Hall Nedderman Hall (abbreviated NH) is an academic engineering building located on the University of Texas at Arlington campus. The building houses the Civil Engineering and Electrical Engineering departments, lecture halls, research labs, the offic ...

and the exclusion of the South Vietnamese flag at a cultural diversity show during International Week. After weeks of protests, the university decided to scrap all flags from the display. *During

World Youth Day 2008 World Youth Day 2008 was a Catholic youth festival that started on 15 July and continued until 20 July 2008 in Sydney, Australia. It was the first World Youth Day held in Australia and the first World Youth Day in Oceania. This meeting was deci ...

in Sydney, tensions flared between the 800 Vietnamese pilgrims who used the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the 2300 Vietnamese Australians pilgrims who used the Republic of Vietnam flag. *In 2008, many protested against ''

Nguoi Viet Daily News ''Nguoi Viet Daily News'' ( vi, Nhật báo Người Việt, lit=Vietnamese People's Daily) is the first, oldest, and largest daily newspaper published in Vietnamese outside of Vietnam. The name of their newspaper ''người Việt'' symbolizes V ...

'', a Vietnamese-language newspaper in

Orange County, California Orange County is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, a ...

, for publishing a photograph of an art installation depicting a foot spa bearing the colors of the flag. *In October 2014, the

Vietnamese Student Association The Union of North American Vietnamese Student Associations (UNAVSA) ( vi, Liên Hội Sinh Viên Việt Nam Bắc Mỹ Châu) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, community-based organization founded in 2004 as a means for Vietnamese organizations from acros ...

chapter at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

discovered that the University had removed the South Vietnamese flag from the campus bookstore's Flag Display (which includes flags from all over the world to celebrate the diversity found among students). Afterwards, the VSA chapter launched an online petition in protest to the decision. The University then responded and explained that the removal was due to a misunderstanding amongst the staff. It then apologized and promised to reinstall the flag afterwards. *Some theories claimed the flag was first introduced by Emperor

Thành Thái Thành Thái (, vi-hantu, 成泰; 14 March 1879 – 20 March 1954) born Nguyễn Phúc Bửu Lân (阮福寶嶙), was the son of Emperor Dục Đức and Empress Dowager Từ Minh. He reigned as emperor for 18 years, from 1889 to 1907. Biog ...

via an imperial decree in 1890. Some views even claimed this flag (called The Yellow Flag for short) is the first true "national flag" of the Vietnamese people for it reflects the aspiration and hope of the people, not just the emperors, for independence and unification of the Viet nation. However, Flags of the World opposed these claims, arguing that no such flag showed up in images from Thành Thái's era, and associated claims on the Internet are not credible. Phạm Quang Tuấn, professor of Chemical Engineering from

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...

, traced the claim – that the yellow flag with three red stripes had originated during Thành Thái's reign – back, at the earliest, to Nguyễn Đình Sài, a former member of the anti-communist organization Việt Tân, who had written the article ''Quốc Kỳ Việt Nam: Nguồn Gốc và Lẽ Chính Thống'' (''The National Flag of Viet Nam: Its Origin and Legitimacy'') in September 2004. To back up his claim, Nguyền Đình Sài cited a webpage from ''Worldstatesmen'' website by Ben Cahoon, an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

researcher affiliated with

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from H ...

. However, Nguyễn Đình Sài admitted Cahoon "did not name any specific documents" for Cahoon's claim that the yellow flag with three red stripes was used between 1890–1920. *During the

2021 storming of the United States Capitol On January 6, 2021, following the defeat of then-United States President, U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election, 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the United States Capitol, U ...

, many South Vietnamese flags were seen in the crowd of rioters. There were mixed reactions among Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. Forty-five Vietnamese American community advocates, politicians, and business leaders signed a statement condemning the use of the South Vietnamese flag in this context, and various Vietnamese American government officials also wrote statements opposing such use.

Colors and dimensions

The colors approximation is listed below:

List of Vietnamese flags

File:Flag of Colonial Annam.svg, Protectorate flag of Annam and

Tonkin Tonkin, also spelled ''Tongkin'', ''Tonquin'' or ''Tongking'', is an exonym referring to the northern region of Vietnam. During the 17th and 18th centuries, this term referred to the domain '' Đàng Ngoài'' under Trịnh lords' control, includ ...

, 1885 to 9 March 1945 File:Second flag of the Nguyen Dynasty.svg, Flag of the Nguyễn dynasty, 1920s–1945 File:Flag of the Empire of Vietnam (1945).svg, Flag of the Empire of Vietnam, 1945 File:Flag of North Vietnam (1945-1955).svg, Flag of the

Democratic Republic of Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...

, 1945–1955 File:Flag of Republic of Cochinchina.svg, Flag of the

Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina French Cochinchina (sometimes spelled ''Cochin-China''; french: Cochinchine française; vi, Xứ thuộc địa Nam Kỳ, Hán tự: ) was a colony of French Indochina, encompassing the whole region of Lower Cochinchina or Southern Vietnam fr ...

, 1946 File:Flag of Republic of Cochinchina (variant).svg, Flag of the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina, 1946–1948 File:Flag of South Vietnam.svg, Flag of the

, the State of Vietnam and the

(1948–1975) File:Flag of North Vietnam (1955–1976).svg, Flag of the

(1955–1976) File:FNL Flag.svg, Flag of Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, 1969–1976 File:Flag of Vietnam.svg, Flag of the

Socialist Republic of Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making it ...

(1976–present) File:Flag of South Vietnam.svg, alt=, Heritage and Freedom Flag, used primarily by Overseas Vietnamese (1948-present) File:Flag of the Communist Party of Vietnam.svg, alt=, Flag of the Communist Party of Vietnam

References

External links

The National Flag of Free Vietnam

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20050512031344/http://www.vpac-usa.org/flag/The%20National%20Flag%20of%20VN.pdf The National Flag of Viet Nam: Its Origin and Legitimacyor i
Vietbao.com
or i
PDF
*
Chiến Dịch Vinh Danh Cờ Vàng Ba Sọc Đỏ
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flag Of South Vietnam South Vietnam S S Symbols of Nguyen dynasty National symbols of Vietnam Vietnamese diaspora South Vietnam