Kim Loan

For the actress of Southern Vietnamese folk opera stage and film, often credited as Kim Loan, see Mộng Tuyền.

Kim Loan (1948-    ) is a Vietnamese singer who had first risen to prominence in Saigon during the 1960s.  A protégée of Nguyen Duc who had also helped launch the careers of others such as Hoang Oanh, Phuong Dung, Phuong Hong Que, Phuong Hong Hanh, Phuong Hong Ngoc and Phuong Hoai Tam, Kim Loan began her musical career as a troupe singer performing at various music and cultural arts festivals in South Vietnam.  Both her beauty and distinctive powerful and raspy voice made Kim Loan easily stand out from all the others in her troupe.  Before reaching her 18th birthday, Kim Loan had already made a name for herself in the music industry of South Vietnam.  Among the songs that helped turn Kim Loan into a famous singer were Can Nha Ngoai O, Go Cua and Nha Mau Tim.  Her celebrity status gained as a professional singer enabled her to partake on a brief acting career appearing on a couple of films produced in South Vietnam in supporting roles.


By the end of the 1960s, Kim Loan seemed to be well on her way to becoming a major star in South Vietnam.  However, on November 6, 1969, Kim Loan shocked her public when she abruptly decided to leave it all behind and boarded a one-way flight out of Saigon to Frankfurt, West Germany to begin a new life overseas.  Resettling in Cologne, she entered the new decade with her sights centered on starting a family.  A few months after her departure from South Vietnam, Kim Loan had gotten married to a fellow former South Vietnamese national who had also taken up permanent residence in West Germany.  Shortly after her wedding came a baby boy.  The series of events all took place in less than a year from the day she first set foot in West Germany that further proved speculations of a scandal that had involved Kim Loan and the president of South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu.

During the months leading up to Kim Loan's departure from Saigon to West Germany, allegations of a torrid affair between the young beautiful singer and South Vietnam's leader were in heavy rotation with tabloid press there.  At Tan Sinh Nhut Airport on the day that Kim Loan boarded her flight to West Germany, it had been reported by several spectators that she had looked somewhat visibly pregnant.  She has since denied such allegations most recently in the year of 2006 when she appeared on Asia Productions' Volume 48 and had revealed on several interviews for overseas Vietnamese magazines that she had never even met the former president.  Kim Loan has since revealed that prior to resettling in Germany back in 1969, while in Vietnam she had been having an intimate relationship with Vietnamese pop singer Si Phu.

Since resettling in Cologne, West Germany in 1969, Kim Loan had successfully completed her studies in sociology and for a number of years held a job as a social worker for the West German government.  After that, she studied cosmetology and skin care and opened a successful beauty clinic in Cologne which remains in full operation to this day.  As for her singing career, Kim Loan has continued to perform for overseas Vietnamese audiences all over Europe and North America since her return to the stage in 1978.  During the 1980s, Kim Loan had recorded and released a series of solo albums.  Most notable was Than Kinh Thuong Nho, a compilation of songs written by Duy Khanh released in 1985.  In 2006, Kim Loan appeared on the popular live show music video series produced by Asia Entertainment performing a medley of songs together with singers Tuan Vu and Truc Mai.


Kim Loan has been married to her husband, Minh, whom she had first met in Germany over 40 years ago.  She is a mother to two grown sons whom are now both physicians.


Link(s):

50 Most Beautiful Vietnamese Women of All Time