Loung Ung

Loung Ung (Khmer: អ៊ឹង លួង; born 19 November 1970) is a Cambodian-American human-rights activist, lecturer, former child soldier and national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World from 1997 to 2003. She has served in the same capacity for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which is affiliated with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.

Born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Ung was the sixth of seven children and the third of four girls to Seng Im Ung and Ay Choung Ung. At the age of 10, she escaped from Cambodia as a survivor of what became known as "the Killing Fields" during the reign of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime. After being resettled as a refugee in the United States, she eventually wrote two books which related to her life experiences from 1975 through 2003. She is portrayed by Sareum Srey Moch as the protagonist in Angelina Jolie's 2017 film First They Killed My Father, based on Ung's memoir of the same name.

Biography

Memoirs

Ung's first memoir, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, details her experiences in Cambodia from 1975 until 1980: "From 1975 to 1979—through execution, starvation, disease, and forced labour—the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the country's population. This is a story of survival: my own and my family's. Though these events constitute my own experience, my story mirrors that of millions of Cambodians. If you had been living in Cambodia during this period, this would be your story too".