By Marla Jo Fisher From The Orange County Register People tend to look at you funny when you say you’re going to Cambodia, as if maybe you’re a few fries short of a Happy Meal. After all, it’s a small country that’s really, really far away and most of what people remember about it involves…

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—The international court convened in Cambodia to judge the Khmer Rouge for its brutal 1970s rule ended its work Thursday after spending $337 million and 16 years to convict just three men of crimes after the regime caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people. In its final session, the U.N.-assisted tribunal…

When I was younger, my father regaled me with stories of his childhood in Cambodia so vivid I felt I could touch or taste them—golden candy made of palm sugar, water buffaloes lumbering through rice paddies (and oh, the leeches that would grab onto your legs!), greens you’d pick at the edge of those same…

“Communism is premised on the state,” Elizabeth Spalding says. “And the state is above all. There’s no transcendent truth. … Everything must serve or be made to serve the state. … All life is cheap in comparison to the [Communist] Party.” In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek spoke with Spalding,…

In 1975, in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, Sokanha Prak assumed the role of mother, father, and protector to her 1-, 3-, and 4-year-old siblings. Fending for them and herself in the countryside, the 6-year-old had no choice. Sokanha’s parents had been ripped from them by the Khmer Rouge, a Chinese Communist-backed military force intent…

Cambodian doctor Nal Oum survived the Cambodian genocide after being targeted by the Khmer Rouge communist regime, along with other “intellectuals,” and forced to join a mass exodus from the city to the countryside to live and perform forced labor. Oum has a sincere warning for the free world, especially for the people in the…

Cambodian doctor Nal Oum survived the Cambodian genocide after being targeted by the Khmer Rouge communist regime, along with other “intellectuals,” and forced to join a mass exodus from the city to the countryside to live and perform forced labor. Oum has a sincere warning for the free world, especially for the people in the…

This episode will premiere on May 14 at 7:30 p.m. ET.   I sit down with Nal Oum, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide. At a time when anyone with a high school education was targeted for extermination by the ruling communist regime, he was deputy director of the national hospital in Phnom Penh and became…

I sit down with Nal Oum, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide. At a time when anyone with a high school education was targeted for extermination by the ruling communist regime, he was deputy director of the national hospital in Phnom Penh and became one of the few medical doctors to survive Cambodia’s notorious Killing…

This episode will premiere on May 14 at 7:30 p.m. ET. I sit down with Nal Oum, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide. At a time when anyone with a high school education was targeted for extermination by the ruling communist regime, he was deputy director of the national hospital in Phnom Penh and became…