Over the years this extraordinarily reclusive figure concealed, clouded, and falsified so many details about his life that it is not surprising that there is even some confusion about his date of birth. North Korean radio announced in 1977 (before Pol Pot had been identified as Saloth Sar) that he had been born in 1925. French colonial records prepared in Cambodia in the 1950s, however, state that he was born on May 25, 1928. The second date, which leaves less time unaccounted for, seemed more plausible than the earlier one to many writers but has been contradicted by Saloth Sar’s siblings in recent interviews. Pol Pot himself insisted on the earlier date in his interview with Nate Thayer in 1997. For these reasons, 1925 is now the preferred year of birth.1

Saloth Sar’s parents were ethnic Khmer. He was born in the village of Prek Sbauv, less than two miles west of the provincial capital of Kompong Thom, some ninety miles north of Phnom Penh. His father, Pen Saloth, was a prosperous farmer with nine hectares of rice land, several draft cattle, and a comfortable tile-roofed house. Saloth Sar’s mother, Sok Nem, was widely respected in the district for her piety and good works. Sar was the eighth of nine children, two of whom were girls. Five of the nine survived into the 1990s.2

Palace Connections

What set the family apart from others in the region were its connections with the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. Saloth Sar’s cousin Meak joined the royal ballet in the 1920s in the closing years of the reign of King Sisowath (r. 1904-1927). She soon became a consort of the king’s eldest son, Prince Sisowath Monivong, and bore him a son, Kossarak, shortly before Monivong became king in 1927. She held the favored position of khun preab me neang—literally, “lady in charge of the women”—from which she controlled the women of the palace. The post was abolished after Monivong’s death, but Meak continued to live near the Royal Palace and was attached to the corps de ballet as a senior teacher until the early 1970s.

Saloth Sar’s family enjoyed other royal connections. In the late 1920s, Sar’s older brother Loth Suong went to Phnom Penh to work at the palace as a clerk. Soon after, their sister Saloth Roeung (nicknamed Saroeun) joined the ballet and at some point in the 1930s became a consort of King Monivong. Suong worked in the palace as a clerk until 1975 and in the early 1940s married a dancer, Chea Samy. Saroeun, a favorite consort of the king, returned to Kompong Thom after Monivong’s death in 1941 and eventually married a local policeman.3