[1] The Cambodian population in France is the most established outside Southeast Asia, with a presence dating to well before the Vietnam War and subsequent Indochina refugee crisis including the horrors of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge who took over in Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975.
In December 1978, after the Khmer Rouge attacked the Vietnamese border, Lê Duẩn orders his troops to attack and invade Cambodia with Soviet-backed Vietnam captured Phnom Penh against Maoist-led Khmer Rouge that been supported by Chairman Mao from Beijing that forced Pot and his Angkar troops to flee the capital back into the mountainous jungles of Anlong Veng near the Thai border which continued to do guerilla warfare from 1979 until 1997, after the kingdom was restored in 1993 with Sihanouk becoming king once again of which millions of Cambodians greeted him as their hero.
While most of these individuals returned to their home country after a brief sojourn, as the Cambodian Civil War erupted in the late 1960s, most opted to remain permanently in France and sponsored the immigration of family members.
France was an ideal destination for Cambodians who were educated or already had family present in the country, while poorer and uneducated refugees tended to immigrate to the United States and Australia.
[7] In contrast to the Vietnamese, Laotian and ethnic Chinese populations in France, Cambodian refugees from conflicts in Indochina arrived relatively later compared to their peers, and had a harder time finding government assistance.
[9] Buddhism plays an important role in the community and is seen as a marker of ethnic identity; in contrast, the ability to speak the Khmer language is less emphasized.