He was born in Char village (ភូមិចារ), Rorvieng sub-district (ឃុំរវៀង),[1] Samrong district (ស្រុកសំរោង), Takéo province, into a poor Chinese Cambodian family.
When he was eight, his father, Khun Kim Chheng, a Chinese man who had fled Communism, died, and he and his six siblings were raised by his mother, Chi Eng, a small shopkeeper and a devout Buddhist.
[2] He began his schooling during the country's first years of independence, when the doors to higher education and professionalization were inching open to all Cambodians, regardless of their social and economic class.
They were arrested, transferred to Tuol Sleng prison and probably killed in Choeung Ek, few days before the end of Pol Pot's regime.
One of his brothers, Khun Ngoy, was among the intellectuals who returned to Cambodia and disappeared from Dey Kraham (Red Land) camp.
(Tomoko Okada, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)[13] "Khun’s last novel, The Accused, published in 1973, is narrated by a writer imprisoned by Cambodia’s military government.