The Viet Cong (VC) was an epithet and umbrella term to refer to the communist-led armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam. In 1960, it was formally organized as the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, and conducted military operations under the name of the Liberation Army of South Vietnam (LASV). The movement fought under the direction of North Vietnam against the South Vietnamese and United States governments during the Vietnam War. The organization had guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized and mobilized peasants in the territory the VC controlled. During the war, communist fighters and some anti-war activists claimed that the VC was an insurgency indigenous to the South that represented the legitimate rights of people in South Vietnam, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of North Vietnam. It was later conceded by the Vietnamese communist leadership that the movement was actually under the North Vietnamese political and military leadership, aiming to unify Vietnam under a communist rule.
North Vietnam established the National Liberation Front (NLF) on December 20, 1960, at Tân Lập village in Tây Ninh Province to foment insurgency in the South. Many of the VC's core members were volunteer "regroupees", southern Viet Minh who had resettled in the North after the Geneva Accords (1954). Hanoi gave the regroupees military training and sent them back to the South along the Ho Chi Minh trail in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The VC called for the unification of Vietnam and the overthrow of the American-backed South Vietnamese government. The VC's best-known action was the Tet Offensive, an assault on more than 100 South Vietnamese towns and cities in 1968, including an attack on the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The offensive kept the attention of the world's media for weeks, but also overextended the VC. Later communist offensives were conducted predominantly by the North Vietnamese. The organization officially merged with the Fatherland Front of Vietnam on February 4, 1977, after North and South Vietnam were officially unified under a communist government.
Việt Cộng (pronounced [viət koŋmˀ] ) is a contraction of Việt Nam cộng sản, lit. 'Vietnamese communist'. The earliest attested form of the term appears in Chinese as 越共 Yuègòng, referring to the Indochinese Communist Party, during World War II when several Vietnamese revolutionary groups established networks in southern China. By the late 1940s, Vietnamese anti-communist nationalist groups had begun employing the term Việt Cộng in their publications, and it subsequently acquired a derogatory connotation. In the early 1950s, the State of Vietnam used the term to depict Vietnamese communists, hiding behind the mask of the Viet Minh front, as false patriots serving the foreign communist powers.
The earliest citation for Viet Cong in English is from 1957. American soldiers referred to the Viet Cong as Victor Charlie or VC. "Victor" and "Charlie" are both letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet. "Charlie" referred to communist forces in general, both South Vietnamese 'Liberation Front' and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN).
Official Vietnamese history gives the front's name as the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLFSV; Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam). Many writers shorten this to National Liberation Front (NLF). In 1969, the NLF created the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (Chính phủ Cách mạng Lâm thời Cộng hòa Miền Nam Việt Nam), abbreviated PRG. Members generally referred to the NLF as "the Front" (Mặt trận). Their armed wing was the "Liberation Army of South Vietnam" (Quân Giải phóng Miền Nam Việt Nam).
By the terms of the Geneva Accords (1954), which ended the First Indochina War, France and the Viet Minh agreed to a ceasefire and to a partition line. The Viet Minh had become the government of North Vietnam, and military forces of the communists regrouped there. Military forces of the non-communists regrouped in South Vietnam, under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem. Elections on reunification were pending for July 1956. A divided Vietnam angered Vietnamese nationalists, but it made the country less of a threat to China. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai negotiated the terms of the ceasefire with France and then imposed them on the Viet Minh.
About 90,000 Viet Minh were evacuated to the North while 5,000 to 10,000 cadre remained in the South, most of them with orders to refocus on political activity and agitation. The Saigon-Cholon Peace Committee, the first VC front, was founded in 1954 to provide leadership for this group. Other front names used by the VC in the 1950s implied that members were fighting for religious causes, for example, "Executive Committee of the Fatherland Front", which suggested affiliation with the Hòa Hảo sect, or "Vietnam-Cambodia Buddhist Association". Front groups were favored by the VC to such an extent that its real leadership remained shadowy until long after the war was over, prompting the expression "the faceless Viet Cong".
The State of Vietnam opposed the partition of Vietnam and refused to sign the Geneva Accords. Arguing that a free election was impossible under the conditions that existed in communist-held territory, Diệm announced in July 1955 that the scheduled election on reunification would not be held. After subduing the Bình Xuyên organized crime gang in the Battle for Saigon in 1955, and the Hòa Hảo and other militant religious sects in early 1956, Diệm turned his attention to the VC. Within a few months, the Viet Cong had been driven into remote swamps. The success of this campaign inspired U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower to dub Diệm the "miracle man" when he visited the U.S. in May 1957. France withdrew its last soldiers from Vietnam in April 1956.
In March 1956, southern communist leader Lê Duẩn presented a plan to revive the insurgency entitled "The Road to the South" to the other members of the Politburo in Hanoi. He argued adamantly that war with the United States was necessary to achieve unification. But as China and the Soviets both opposed confrontation at this time, Lê Duẩn's plan was rejected and communists in the South were ordered to limit themselves to economic struggle. Leadership divided into a "North first", or pro-Beijing, faction led by Trường Chinh, and a "South first" faction led by Lê Duẩn.
As the Sino-Soviet split widened in the following months, Hanoi began to play the two communist giants off against each other. The North Vietnamese leadership approved tentative measures to revive the southern insurgency in December 1956. Lê Duẩn's blueprint for revolution in the South was approved in principle, but implementation was conditional on winning international support and on modernizing the army, which was expected to take at least until 1959. President Ho Chi Minh stressed that violence was still a last resort. Nguyễn Hữu Xuyên was assigned military command in the South, replacing Lê Duẩn, who was appointed North Vietnam's acting party boss. This represented a loss of power for Hồ, who preferred the more moderate Võ Nguyên Giáp, who was defense minister.
An assassination campaign, referred to as "extermination of traitors" or "armed propaganda" in communist literature, began in April 1957. Tales of sensational murder and mayhem soon crowded the headlines. Seventeen civilians were killed by machine gun fire at a bar in Châu Đốc in July and in September a district chief was killed with his entire family on a main highway in broad daylight. In October 1957, a series of bombs exploded in Saigon and left 13 Americans wounded.
In a speech given on September 2, 1957, Hồ reiterated the "North first" line of economic struggle. The launch of Sputnik in October boosted Soviet confidence and led to a reassessment of policy regarding Indochina, long treated as a Chinese sphere of influence. In November, Hồ traveled to Moscow with Lê Duẩn and gained approval for a more militant line. In early 1958, Lê Duẩn met with the leaders of "Inter-zone V" (northern South Vietnam) and ordered the establishment of patrols and safe areas to provide logistical support for activity in the Mekong Delta and in urban areas. In June 1958, the VC created a command structure for the eastern Mekong Delta. French scholar Bernard Fall published an influential article in July 1958 which analyzed the pattern of rising violence and concluded that a new war had begun.