This study examines how structural components—state capacity, social structure, and political context—shaped land reform in North Korea and North Vietnam. In Korea, Japan’s direct and centralized colonial rule established a modern land registration system and subordinated the landlord class to the colonial state. As a result, the communist regime could clearly identify landlords and redistribute land based on existing records, encountering minimal social resistance. In contrast, the French employed indirect colonial rule in Vietnam and exercised weak infrastructural power, leaving cadastral records underdeveloped and individual property rights ill-defined. The landlord class, empowered by colonial authorities and hostile to the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, retained significant influence. Consequently, land reform cadres had to simultaneously implement land redistribution and state centralization. Lacking reliable data to distinguish landlords from middle peasants, they implemented radical central directives to purge perceived class enemies, leading to disastrous outcomes.