Viet Minh - The Khmer Viet Minh

The Khmer Viet Minh

Khmer Viet Minh were the 3,000 to 5,000 Cambodian communist cadres, left-wing members of the Khmer Issarak movement regrouped in the United Issarak Front after 1950, most of whom lived in exile in North Vietnam after the 1954 Geneva Conference. It was a derogatory term used by Norodom Sihanouk, dismissing the Cambodian leftists who had been organizing pro-independence agitations in alliance with the Vietnamese. Sihanouk's public criticism and mockery of the Khmer Viet Minh had the damaging effect of increasing the power of the hardline, anti-Vietnamese, but also anti-monarchist, members of the CPK, led by Pol Pot.

The Khmer Viet Minh were instrumental in the foundation of the Cambodian Salvation Front (FUNSK) in 1978. The FUNSK invaded Cambodia along with the Vietnamese Army and overthrew the Democratic Kampuchea Pol Pot state. Many of the Khmer Viet Minh had married Vietnamese women during their long exile in Vietnam.