South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam, was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975. It first garnered international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the French Union, with its capital at Saigon, before becoming a republic in 1955, the time when the southern portion of Vietnam was one member of the Western Bloc during part of the Cold War after the 1954 division of Vietnam.
