Kong Bunchhoeun was a Khmer writer, novelist, songwriter, filmmaker, painter, and poet.
13 Facts About Kong Bunchhoeun
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Kong Bunchhoeun composed a number of hit songs for Cambodia's greatest singer of all time, Sinn Sisamouth and the contemporary vocalist and singer Preap Sovath.
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Kong Bunchhoeun composed a number of poems and novels when Cambodian literature flourished in the 1960s, and he survived the Khmer regime partly as he wrote less towards the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge.
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Kong Bunchhoeun's most well-known work of literature, The Fate of Tat Marina, published in 2000, is a loosely fictionalised account of his niece Tat Marina's affair with Svay Sitha, an undersecretary of state at the Council of Ministers, and the subsequent acid attack that left her suffering ghastly wounds.
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Kong Bunchhoeun continued writing in self-exile, publishing at least 10 books from abroad.
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Kong Bunchhoeun was born to Kong Chhin from Takeo Province and Mor Phoeng from Battambang province.
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Kong Bunchhoeun's father was a Khmer-French translator and his mother a housewife.
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Kong Bunchhoeun's father liked reading and collecting newspapers especially Extreme-ORIENT, which was published in Prey Nokor, present-day Ho Chi Minh City.
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Kong Bunchhoeun continued to do odd jobs as a construction worker, a street vendor, and others to make a living while writing his novels.
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Kong Bunchhoeun failed at first to convince book stores to publish his novels until he met a friend who told him that a film production company was looking for him to buy the license of his novel "Woman Murderer" and landed a job as a story writer at the company.
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Kong Bunchhoeun used his painting skill to survive in the prison camp with his wife because the Khmer Rouge cadres loved to have their pictures painted.
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Kong Bunchhoeun spent many days in hospital in Norway, succumbing to cancer on 17 April 2016.
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Kong Bunchhoeun is survived by his wife, Uch Kolab and several of his children residing in Europe.