The World Looked Away: Vietnam After the War

This is the true story of Quoc Pham, a former South Vietnamese naval officer, and his wife Kim-Cuong. It tells of the love between a man and a woman and their courage in the face of hopelessness after a war. The arc of their story parallels the story of the people of South Vietnam just before and in the years after the war ended in April 1975. The war-weary United States had turned its attention away from the region, and the Communist leadership closed Vietnam to Western journalists. For more than a decade, little was heard, but retribution against the South Vietnamese was swift and unending. Hundreds of thousands of former South Vietnamese military officers like Quoc were sent to Reeducation Camps. Expecting a confinement of just ten days, most were incarcerated for years, suffering brutality, starvation and death. The families of prisoners had property and savings confiscated. They were denied jobs and medical care. They lived in poverty. Ultimately, nearly a million "Boat People" chose to escape Vietnam by sea, taking their chances in fragile overcrowded vessels. Thousands died at the hands of pirates and the unforgiving ocean. This is a story of a people - of what happened in Vietnam while the world looked away.