TWO recent college graduates now working for the Cambodia branch of an NGO, the Asia Foundation, spend their free time in typical 20-something ways: watching films, playing video games and hanging out with friends. How different were the lives of the parents of the two graduates when they were the same age as their children are now, under the dark rule of the Khmer Rouge. Those of Menghun Kaing eked out a living farming, with no prospect of university, while the father of Daramongkol Keo spent 18 months in hiding from the brutal regime in the forest, extinguishing his campfire whenever he heard soldiers approaching. Like many from that generation, the parents rarely talk about the past. To survive in those days, Ms Menghun Kaing explains, people had to “work hard and not say anything, just keep everything to themselves.”
Today about one-third of Cambodians, and a much higher proportion in Phnom Penh, the capital, have internet access, mainly via smartphones. Young Cambodians are coming of age in a still-poor but quickly developing country: with gross national income of $1,020 per person in...Continue reading
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