Military career

Hoàng Cơ Minh graduated from the South Vietnamese naval academy at Nha Trang and studied at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He quickly rose as a commander in the South Vietnamese riverine forces.

From 1964 to 1965, he served as defense attaché at the South Vietnamese embassy in Seoul, where he was instrumental in securing the diplomatic and military support of South Korea. Following his return to Vietnam, he held a series of naval commands. He was widely respected for his battlefield success and incorruptibility.

In 1974, he was promoted to rear admiral, becoming one of the youngest flag officers in the Republic of Vietnam Military Forces. In 1975 he commanded the 2nd Coastal Zone at Cam Ranh Naval Base.^[5]: 340 As North Vietnamese forces entered Saigon on April 30, 1975, Hoàng Cơ Minh's final act as a military officer was to lead a South Vietnamese naval flotilla out to sea to escort the first wave of "boat people" to freedom and to prevent the warships from falling into communist hands.

From political refugee to movement leader

Hoàng Cơ Minh and his family resettled in the Washington, D.C. area. Like most Vietnamese refugees in 1975, he was sponsored by an American family. Hoàng Cơ Minh's family was taken in by James Kelly, a Vietnam veteran and later senior national security official in the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.

For the next several years, Hoàng Cơ Minh worked as a house painter during the day and focused his energies on organizing among the diaspora. He cofounded several political organizations aiming to promote freedom in Vietnam. From this network of overseas Vietnamese, a political movement took shape. It coalesced into Việt Tân with the mission of undertaking a revolutionary struggle to end dictatorship and reform the country.

Hoàng Cơ Minh advocated a self-reliant struggle based on the power of the Vietnamese people with the ultimate goal of rebuilding and modernizing the country. This ran contrary to much of the sentiment in the diaspora then which believed that outside support was absolutely essential for changing Vietnam and narrowly defined the struggle as overthrowing communism. The name of Việt Tân is based on the fusion of "Việt Nam" and "Canh Tân", which means comprehensive reform.

In 1981, Hoàng Cơ Minh met with Thai government officials and received their agreement to open offices along the border with Laos. From these operating bases, Vietnamese from the diaspora linked up with compatriots inside the country to build a pro-democracy movement on the ground. At Việt Tân's founding political conference in September 1982, Hoàng Cơ Minh was elected chairman. He spent most of his time in the malaria-infested jungle where he could be close to Vietnam and lead the movement.

The period of the 1980s was a challenging time for Vietnamese activists. The country was sealed off from the world and Vietnamese communist troops occupied both Laos and Cambodia. To travel to and from Vietnam, people would have to travel through the "killing fields" of Indochina. It was in that environment that Việt Tân members from the diaspora tried to link up with activists on the ground.

In summer 1987, Hoàng Cơ Minh led a group of 200 activists from Thailand to Vietnam in an operation known as “Eastward” (Đông Tiến). They were ambushed by communist troops along the way. Critically wounded, Hoàng Cơ Minh ended his life on August 28, 1987, less than 20 kilometers from the border with Vietnam.

Inspired by the vision of Hoàng Cơ Minh and his sacrifice for the movement, Việt Tân continues to this day as the leading Vietnamese pro-democracy opposition party.