Loung Ung

Loung Ung was born to a middle-class family in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, in 1970. A rambunctious and curious child, Ung lived a life of relative privilege with her parents and six siblings until the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975. Ung, then five years old, was forced to leave the city with her family and make a grueling journey to a distant rural village to work. Because Ung’s father, Sem, had been a military police captain for the now deposed government, the Ungs sought to pass as peasant farmers to avoid persecution. Sem was eventually executed by Khmer Rouge soldiers. Upon his death, Ung’s mother sent her remaining children to different work camps for their own protection. She and Ung’s youngest sibling, Geak, were later killed by the Khmer Rouge. Orphaned and separated from her remaining siblings, Ung was forced to train as a child soldier until the Vietnamese defeated the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Ung’s eldest brother, Meng, and his wife eventually smuggled her to a Thai refugee camp, where they were able to secure sponsorship from a church group and come to the United States in June of 1980. The three moved to Vermont, where Ung attended school while caring for Meng’s two daughters. Ung earned a bachelor’s degree in 1993 and served as the spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine Free World from 1997 to 2005. She now lives with her husband in Ohio, but has returned to Cambodia more than thirty times and given speeches throughout the world about her experience.