Pseudonym for Salah Sar, Cambodian communist politician and prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) from 1976 to 1979. Pol Pot was born into a prosperous peasant family that enjoyed the patronage of the Cambodian court. Several relatives worked in the palace in Phnom Penh; one of Pol Pot's sisters was a minor wife of King Sisowath Monivong (r. 1927-1941). Pol Pot was educated in Phnom Penh and Kompong Cham. In 1949, perhaps because of his palace connections, he was awarded a scholarship to study electrical technology in Paris. After repeatedly failing his examinations, and probably joining the French Communist Party, Pol Pot returned to Cambodia in 1953 and served briefly in anti-French guerilla forces controlled by the Vietnamese.

In 1960, he was named to the central committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK); two years later, after being named secretary, he went into hiding in the northeastern area of the country. He visited China, Vietnam, and North Korea in the mid-1960s. After Norodom Sihanouk's government had been overthrown in 1970, Pol Pot assumed command of guerilla forces seeking to overthrow the Khmer Republic. His forces won the civil war in 1975, although his own role, and that of the CPK, was kept a secret until 1977. In the meantime, the regime of Democratic Kampuchea, secretly controlled by the CPK, embarked on a radical transformation of Cambodian society, during which perhaps a million people were assassinated or died of malnutrition or overwork. Pol Pot revealed that he was prime minister of the regime in 1976. In 1977-1978, instigated purges of the CPK and began to encourage a cult of personality in his honor. Overthrown by the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, Pol Pot took command of guerilla forces along the Thai border, while publicly renouncing political office. He died under Khmer Rouge house arrest in the Cambodian jungle in April 1998.

The Encyclopedia of Asian History. Asia Society and Charles Scribner's Sons.