Flag of Vietnam

What the flag of Vietnam looks like

The flag of Vietnam is one of the simplest national flags in the world. It has a red field with a single yellow star, and nothing else. The proportions are 2:3, and the star is centered both horizontally and vertically. Its points are straight and sharp, and one of them points straight up.

The red is a bright, warm red and the star is a pure yellow, often described as golden. The star is large for a national flag: the circle that touches its points is about two-thirds of the flag's height across. Because it has no emblem, border or text, the flag is easy to draw and to recognize from far away. You can see how it looks as an icon on the Vietnam flag emoji page, or get image files on the download page.

The design is sometimes confused with the flag of China, which is also red with yellow stars, but the Chinese flag has five stars set in the upper left corner. Morocco's flag is red with a green pentagram, and a number of other flags use a red field with a star, so the color of the star and its position are the quickest way to tell them apart.

Vietnam flag meaning and symbolism

The red background is most often said to represent revolution and the blood shed in the struggle for national independence. The yellow of the star recalls the color traditionally linked to the Vietnamese people, and in the Vietnamese tradition it is also a color of the land and of the nation.

The five points of the star are commonly explained as the five main groups of society that built the nation: intellectuals, farmers, workers, businesspeople and soldiers. This reading is widely taught in Vietnam. The star as a whole is also taken to stand for the unity of the country under the leadership of the Communist Party. These are traditional explanations rather than a legal definition: the Constitution describes the flag as red with a golden five-pointed star in the middle, and does not list meanings for each element.

History of the Vietnam flag

The red flag with a yellow star first appeared in southern Vietnam in 1940, during the Nam Kỳ (Cochinchina) uprising against French colonial rule. It is generally credited to the revolutionary Nguyễn Hữu Tiến, who was executed by the French authorities soon afterward. In 1941 the Việt Minh, the independence front led by Hồ Chí Minh, took the design as its banner.

After the August Revolution, Hồ Chí Minh declared independence on 2 September 1945 and the red flag with the yellow star became the flag of the new Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The 1946 constitution confirmed it as the national flag. A revision followed on 30 November 1955, when the star was redrawn so that its points were sharper and its proportions more regular. That is the design in use now.

When North and South Vietnam were reunified in 1976 as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the flag of the north was kept as the flag of the whole country. Before the 20th century, the Nguyễn dynasty emperors had used yellow flags, and for most of the French period the country was divided into protectorates and a colony that flew other flags.

The South Vietnam flag and other old Vietnamese flags

Several flags were used in Vietnam before 1975, and they are often searched for separately. The best known is the flag of South Vietnam, which has a yellow field with three horizontal red stripes across the middle. The design was first used by the State of Vietnam in 1948 and was then kept by the Republic of Vietnam, the country in the south that existed from 1955 until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Its yellow echoes the imperial flags and its stripes are said to represent the three regions of Vietnam.

North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, used the red flag with the yellow star. The National Liberation Front, whom Americans called the Viet Cong, had its own flag: two horizontal halves, red over blue, with a yellow star in the middle. It was the flag of the NLF and of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, which existed until 1976.

Today the yellow flag with three red stripes is not an official flag in Vietnam. It is widely used by Vietnamese communities abroad, who call it the Heritage and Freedom Flag, and it has been recognized by a number of US states and cities. The government of Vietnam objects to its display, so people who fly it inside the country may face problems with the authorities.