It was a satellite state of Vietnam, founded in Cambodia by the Vietnamese-backed Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, a group of Cambodian communists who were dissatisfied with the Khmer Rouge due to its oppressive rule and defected from it after the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot's government.

In November, pro-Vietnamese Khmer Rouge leader Vorn Vet[11] led an unsuccessful coup d'état and was subsequently arrested, tortured and executed.

The government of Democratic Kampuchea lost no time in denouncing the KUFNS as "a Vietnamese political organisation with a Khmer name", because several of its key members had been affiliated with the KCP.

This organisation provided a much-needed rallying point for Cambodian leftists opposed to Khmer Rouge rule, channeling efforts towards positive action instead of empty denunciations of the genocidal regime.

An invasion force of 120,000-150,000,[16] consisting of combined armour and infantry units with strong artillery support, drove west into the level countryside of Cambodia's southeastern provinces.

On 8 January 1979, after the DK army had been routed and Phnom Penh captured by Vietnamese troops the day before, the KPRC proclaimed that the new official name of Cambodia was the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK).

[22] Heng Samrin was named head of state of the PRK, and other Khmer communists that had formed the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party, like Chan Sy and Hun Sen, were prominent from the start.

The Chinese ethnic minority, however, perceived as an "arm of the hegemonists" continued to be oppressed, even though many of its members, mainly among the trader community, had endured great suffering under the Khmer Rouge.

[24] One of the main official acts of the PRK was a partial restoration of Buddhism as the state religion of Cambodia and temples were gradually reopened to accommodate the monks and to resume a certain measure of traditional religious life.

Among the surviving educated urban Cambodians who could have helped the struggling country to its feet, many opted to flee the Socialist state and flocked to the refugee camps to emigrate to the West.

Large billboards were displayed with patriotic slogans and party members taught the eleven points of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation (KUFNS) to assembled adults.

It had left the PRK with little to start with, for there were no police, no schools, no books, no hospitals, no post and telecommunications, no legal system and no broadcasting networks, either for television or radio, whether state-owned or private.

[18] These groups included Lon Nol-era soldiers —-coalesced in 1979–80 to form the Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces (KPNLAF)— which pledged loyalty to former Prime Minister Son Sann, and Moulinaka (Mouvement pour la Libération Nationale du Kampuchea), loyal to Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

[18] Fraught with both internal and mutual discord, the non-communist groups opposing the PRK, were never very effective, so that all through the civil war against the KPRAF/CPAF the only seriously organised fighting force against the state was the former Khmer Rouge militia, ironically labelled as the "Resistance".

[citation needed] The Vietnamese concentrated on consolidating their gains through the K5 Plan, an extravagant and labour-intensive attempt to seal guerrilla infiltration routes into the country by means of trenches, wire fences, and minefields along virtually the entire Thai-Cambodian border.

Vietnam's proposal to withdraw its remaining occupation forces in 1989–90—one of the repercussions of the dismemberment of the Soviet bloc[31] as well as the result of the US and Chinese pressure—forced the PRK to begin economic and constitutional reforms in an attempt to ensure future political dominance.

[citation needed] On 29–30 April 1989, the National Assembly of the PRK, presided over by Hun Sen, held a meeting in order to make some, at first, largely cosmetic constitutional changes.

Capital punishment was officially abolished and Buddhism, which had been partially reestablished by the PRK in 1979, was fully reintroduced as the national religion, by which the restriction was lifted on the ordination of men under 50 years old and Buddhist traditional chanting was resumed in the media.

Although the SOC reestablished the prominence of monarchical symbols, like the grand palace in Phnom Penh, that was as far as it would go for the time-being, especially since Norodom Sihanouk had steadfastly associated himself with the CGDK, the opposition coalition against the PRK that included the Khmer Rouge.

[7] This led eventually to the effective reinstitutionalisation of the traditional Cambodian family economy and to some more radical change of policies regarding privatisation during the State of Cambodia time (1989–1993).

[46] The Soviet Union, East Germany, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Laos, Mongolia, Cuba, South Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Congo, Benin, and other Eastern Bloc states, as well as a number of Soviet-friendly developing countries, like India, followed Vietnam in recognizing the new regime.

"[50] International forums, like ASEAN meetings and the UN General Assembly would be used to condemn the PRK and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge was removed from the centre stage of attention and Pol Pot effectively won the support of the US and most of Europe against Vietnam.

[51] China and most Western governments, as well as a number of African, Asian and Latin American states[52] repeatedly backed the Khmer Rouge in the U.N. and voted in favour of DK retaining Cambodia's seat in the organisation at the expense of the PRK.

The largest movement fighting Cambodia's communist government was largely made up of members of the former Khmer Rouge regime, whose human rights record was among the worst of the 20th century.

Intermediary linkages between the state bureaucracy and grass-roots activities were provided by numerous organisations affiliated with the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation (KUFNS).

Suddenly the Cambodian leadership found itself scrambling for favour abroad, which included the need to open its markets, the gradual abandoning of its original pro-Soviet stance and the pressure to find some accommodation with the factions warring against it.

Henceforward the members of the Government of the PRK had to walk a narrow path between Cambodian nationalism and "Indochinese solidarity" with Vietnam, which meant making sure they didn't irritate their Vietnamese patrons.

In late 1987, the country was divided into eighteen provinces (khet) and two special municipalities (krong), Phnom Penh and Kampong Saom, which were under direct central government control.

At the provincial and district levels, where the term of office was five years, committee members needed the additional endorsement of officials representing the KUFNCD and other affiliated mass organisations.

Veterans from the Eastern Zone revolution, especially those from Kampong Cham, Svay Rieng, as well as people who had been educated in Vietnam after the 1954 Geneva Conference held important positions in the Ministry of National Defense.