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From mid 1953 to early 1956, the North Vietnamese Communists embarked on a ruthless "land reform" in which landowners, dissidents, and French collaborators were slaughtered en masse in a "genocide triggered by class discrimination."<ref name="rfa.org">http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam_landreform-20060608.html</ref> Declassified Politburo documents confirm that 1 in 1,000 North Vietnamese (i.e., about 14,000 people) were the minimum quota targeted for execution during the earlier "rent reduction" campaign; the number killed during the multiple stages of the considerably more radical "land reform" was probably many times greater.<ref>Alec Holcombe, [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/vs.2010.5.2.243?searchUrl=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3Ffilter%3Djid%253A10.2307%252Fj50000660%26Query%3Drent%2Breduction%26wc%3Don%26Search.x%3D0%26Search.y%3D0&Search=yes&uid=3739656&uid=367529381&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101672198221 Politburo's Directive Issued on May 4, 1953, on Some Special Issues regarding Mass Mobilization] ''Journal of Vietnamese Studies'', Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 243-247, quoting a translated Politburo directive from May 4, 1953. This directive was published in [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/vs.2010.5.2.225?uid=3739656&uid=367529381&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101672298091 Complete Collection of Party Documents] (Van Kien Dang Toan Tap), a 54 volume work authorized by the Vietnamese Communist Party.</ref> In 1957, during its "Rectification of Errors" campaign, North Vietnam admitted that it had wrongly executed about 15,000 communist cadre during the "land reform", and that 30% of the "landlords" executed were party members; i.e., that about 50,000 people were executed in total.<ref>''Nhan Dan,'' August 13, 1957.</ref><ref>''Time,'' July 1, 1957, p. 13, says they were given a proper burial.</ref><ref>Gittinger, J. Price, [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3024603?uid=3739656&uid=2134&uid=367529391&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=367529381&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101618662091 "Communist Land Policy in Viet Nam"], ''Far Eastern Survey'', Vol. 29, No. 8, 1957, p. 118.</ref><ref>Lam Thanh Liem (1990), [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/landreform.html "Chinh sach cai cach ruong dat cua Ho Chi Minh: sai lam hay toi ac?"] in Jean-Francois Revel et al., ''Ho Chi Minh'', Nam A, pp. 179-214. "Vo Nhan Tri found and read a top-secret report on the number of communist cadres falsely accused and executed: 15,000."</ref>  Lam Thanh Liem, a major authority on land issues in Vietnam, conducted multiple interviews in which communist cadres independently confirmed that 20-30% of those executed were actually fellow communists, but gave higher estimates for executions ranging from 120,000 to 200,000.  Such figures match the "nearly 150,000 houses and huts which were allocated to new occupants".<ref>Lam Thanh Liem (1990), [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/landreform.html "Chinh sach cai cach ruong dat cua Ho Chi Minh: sai lam hay toi ac?"] in Jean-Francois Revel et al., ''Ho Chi Minh'', Nam A, pp. 179-214.</ref><ref>Dommen, Arthur J. (2001), [http://books.google.com/books?id=MauWlUjuWNsC&pg=PA340#v=onepage&q&f=false ''The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans''], Indiana University Press, p. 340, quotes comparable figures for communist cadre executed.</ref>  Official records from the time suggest that 172,008 "landlords" were killed during the "land reform", of whom 123,266 (71.66%) were later found to be wrongly classified.<ref>''The History of the Vietnamese Economy'' (2005), Vol. 2, edited by Dang Phong of the Institute of Economy, Vietnamese Institute of Social Sciences.  Landlords were classified as 5.68% of the population, but only a fraction of them were killed.  These figures are proportionally comparable to those for China's land reform, in which millions of "landlords" were slaughtered.</ref>  The full death toll was even greater because victims' families starved to death under the "policy of isolation."<ref>''Nhan Vhan,'' November 5, 1956:  "In the agrarian reform, illegal arrests, imprisonments, investigations (with barbarous torture), executions, requisitions of property, and '''the quarantining of landowners’ houses''' (or houses of peasants wrongly classified as landowners), which left innocent children to die of starvation, are not exclusively due to the shortcomings of the leadership, but also due to the lack of a complete legal code. If the cadres had felt that they were closely observed by the god of justice... calamities might have been avoided for the masses." Nhan Vhan was one of the best-known opposition periodicals that was allowed during the three-month period of relative intellectual freedom in the fall of 1956, modeled on Mao's "Hundred Flowers" campaign.</ref>  As communist defector Le Xuan Giao explained:  "There was nothing worse than the starvation of the children in a family whose parents were under the control of a land reform team.  They isolated the house, and the people who lived there would starve.  The children were all innocent.  There was nothing worse than that.  They wanted to see the whole family dead."<ref name="Turner">Turner, Robert F.  [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/deniers/vietnam/turner.pdf "Expert Punctures 'No Bloodbath' Myth"].  ''[[Human Events]],'' November 11, 1972.</ref>

From mid 1953 to early 1956, the North Vietnamese Communists embarked on a ruthless "land reform" in which landowners, dissidents, and French collaborators were slaughtered en masse in a "genocide triggered by class discrimination."<ref name="rfa.org">http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam_landreform-20060608.html</ref> Declassified Politburo documents confirm that 1 in 1,000 North Vietnamese (i.e., about 14,000 people) were the minimum quota targeted for execution during the earlier "rent reduction" campaign; the number killed during the multiple stages of the considerably more radical "land reform" was probably many times greater.<ref>Alec Holcombe, [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/vs.2010.5.2.243?searchUrl=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3Ffilter%3Djid%253A10.2307%252Fj50000660%26Query%3Drent%2Breduction%26wc%3Don%26Search.x%3D0%26Search.y%3D0&Search=yes&uid=3739656&uid=367529381&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101672198221 Politburo's Directive Issued on May 4, 1953, on Some Special Issues regarding Mass Mobilization] ''Journal of Vietnamese Studies'', Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 243-247, quoting a translated Politburo directive from May 4, 1953. This directive was published in [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/vs.2010.5.2.225?uid=3739656&uid=367529381&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101672298091 Complete Collection of Party Documents] (Van Kien Dang Toan Tap), a 54 volume work authorized by the Vietnamese Communist Party.</ref> In 1957, during its "Rectification of Errors" campaign, North Vietnam admitted that it had wrongly executed about 15,000 communist cadre during the "land reform", and that 30% of the "landlords" executed were party members; i.e., that about 50,000 people were executed in total.<ref>''Nhan Dan,'' August 13, 1957.</ref><ref>''Time,'' July 1, 1957, p. 13, says they were given a proper burial.</ref><ref>Gittinger, J. Price, [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3024603?uid=3739656&uid=2134&uid=367529391&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=367529381&uid=3739256&uid=60&sid=21101618662091 "Communist Land Policy in Viet Nam"], ''Far Eastern Survey'', Vol. 29, No. 8, 1957, p. 118.</ref><ref>Lam Thanh Liem (1990), [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/landreform.html "Chinh sach cai cach ruong dat cua Ho Chi Minh: sai lam hay toi ac?"] in Jean-Francois Revel et al., ''Ho Chi Minh'', Nam A, pp. 179-214. "Vo Nhan Tri found and read a top-secret report on the number of communist cadres falsely accused and executed: 15,000."</ref>  Lam Thanh Liem, a major authority on land issues in Vietnam, conducted multiple interviews in which communist cadres independently confirmed that 20-30% of those executed were actually fellow communists, but gave higher estimates for executions ranging from 120,000 to 200,000.  Such figures match the "nearly 150,000 houses and huts which were allocated to new occupants".<ref>Lam Thanh Liem (1990), [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/vietnam/landreform.html "Chinh sach cai cach ruong dat cua Ho Chi Minh: sai lam hay toi ac?"] in Jean-Francois Revel et al., ''Ho Chi Minh'', Nam A, pp. 179-214.</ref><ref>Dommen, Arthur J. (2001), [http://books.google.com/books?id=MauWlUjuWNsC&pg=PA340#v=onepage&q&f=false ''The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans''], Indiana University Press, p. 340, quotes comparable figures for communist cadre executed.</ref>  Official records from the time suggest that 172,008 "landlords" were killed during the "land reform", of whom 123,266 (71.66%) were later found to be wrongly classified.<ref>''The History of the Vietnamese Economy'' (2005), Vol. 2, edited by Dang Phong of the Institute of Economy, Vietnamese Institute of Social Sciences.  Landlords were classified as 5.68% of the population, but only a fraction of them were killed.  These figures are proportionally comparable to those for China's land reform, in which millions of "landlords" were slaughtered.</ref>  The full death toll was even greater because victims' families starved to death under the "policy of isolation."<ref>''Nhan Vhan,'' November 5, 1956:  "In the agrarian reform, illegal arrests, imprisonments, investigations (with barbarous torture), executions, requisitions of property, and '''the quarantining of landowners’ houses''' (or houses of peasants wrongly classified as landowners), which left innocent children to die of starvation, are not exclusively due to the shortcomings of the leadership, but also due to the lack of a complete legal code. If the cadres had felt that they were closely observed by the god of justice... calamities might have been avoided for the masses." Nhan Vhan was one of the best-known opposition periodicals that was allowed during the three-month period of relative intellectual freedom in the fall of 1956, modeled on Mao's "Hundred Flowers" campaign.</ref>  As communist defector Le Xuan Giao explained:  "There was nothing worse than the starvation of the children in a family whose parents were under the control of a land reform team.  They isolated the house, and the people who lived there would starve.  The children were all innocent.  There was nothing worse than that.  They wanted to see the whole family dead."<ref name="Turner">Turner, Robert F.  [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/deniers/vietnam/turner.pdf "Expert Punctures 'No Bloodbath' Myth"].  ''[[Human Events]],'' November 11, 1972.</ref>

In 1959, Hanoi's politburo received a series of reports indicating that even though the North had been directing a phase one guerrilla insurgency in the South for two years, the South was socially and economically out-pacing the North. "By Tet of 1959," William Colby writes in his book, ''Lost Victory'', "it was plain that a nationalist and non-Communist Vietnam was firmly established. It was also becoming apparent that its future was, if anything, more promising than the gray and regimented society in the North."<ref name="vietnam.ttu.edu">http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/story.htm</ref>  

In 1959, Hanoi's politburo received a series of reports indicating that even though the North had been directing a phase one guerrilla insurgency in the South for two years, the South was socially and economically out-pacing the North. "By Tet of 1959," [[William Colby]] writes in his book, ''Lost Victory'', "it was plain that a nationalist and non-Communist Vietnam was firmly established. It was also becoming apparent that its future was, if anything, more promising than the gray and regimented society in the North."<ref name="vietnam.ttu.edu">http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/story.htm</ref>  

In response, the North decided to rapidly escalate the campaign to conquer South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia using the Ho Chi Minh trail.  To "hide" the fact that "there had been an invasion from the North," as one North Vietnamese commander openly admitted, seemingly indigenous forces were deployed in the initial phases of the conflict.  Originally part of the [[Vietminh]] and honorary branches of the North Vietnamese army; groups of Cambodian (the [[Khmer Rouge]]), Laotian (the Pathet Lao), and South Vietnamese (the [[Vietcong]]) Communists were dispatched by the North to overthrow the governments of their respective countries.  Thousands of North Vietnamese troops overtly aided them by providing arms and training, and by invading and occupying large chunks of Cambodia and Laos to assist them.  By 1961 northern Communists were assassinating one hundred southern hamlet, village, and/or district officials each month. By 1962 that figure had grown to one thousand per month.<ref name="vietnam.ttu.edu"/>

In response, the North decided to rapidly escalate the campaign to conquer South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia using the Ho Chi Minh trail.  To "hide" the fact that "there had been an invasion from the North," as one North Vietnamese commander openly admitted, seemingly indigenous forces were deployed in the initial phases of the conflict.  Originally part of the [[Vietminh]] and honorary branches of the North Vietnamese army; groups of Cambodian (the [[Khmer Rouge]]), Laotian (the Pathet Lao), and South Vietnamese (the [[Vietcong]]) Communists were dispatched by the North to overthrow the governments of their respective countries.  Thousands of North Vietnamese troops overtly aided them by providing arms and training, and by invading and occupying large chunks of Cambodia and Laos to assist them.  By 1961 northern Communists were assassinating one hundred southern hamlet, village, and/or district officials each month. By 1962 that figure had grown to one thousand per month.<ref name="vietnam.ttu.edu"/>