Early Life
Son Sen was born in the village of Huong Hoa, Tra Vinh Province in southern Vietnam to a minor landowning family of Khmer descent. The Khmer Institute reported that he also had some Chinese ancestry. From 1946 he attended a teacher training college in Phnom Penh, and in the 1950s received a scholarship to study in Paris, where he became a member of a Marxist group of Cambodian students centred on Saloth Sar (Pol Pot), Ieng Sary, and Hou Yuon. Along with other members of the group, Sen was influenced by the radical line pursued by the French Communist Party.
Sen's academic record was relatively mediocre, and in May 1956 the authorities withdrew his scholarship due to his continued participation in political activity. Returning to Cambodia with a teaching certificate, he taught for a time at the Lycee Sisowath, and went on to become director of studies of the National Teaching Institute, part of the University of Phnom Penh. By 1960 he had also, however, joined the clandestine Cambodian Communist Party, then known as the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party and led by Tou Samouth.
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