The Kingdom of Cambodia is a country located in Southeast Asia, with its capital at Phnom Penh. Cambodia, formerly known as Kampuchea, was vassalized by Luang Prabang during the 15th century and became a protectorate of France in 1863, with the north and west of the country being reclaimed from Thailand to become a part of French Indochina. Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953 as a kingdom ruled by the Norodom dynasty, but the spillover of the Vietnam War led to the communist Khmer Rouge rising up in the country. The Khmer Rouge, assisted by the North Vietnamese Army, entered Phnom Penh in 1975 and created a new communist dictatorship. Cambodia was ruled by Pol Pot's brutal communist government for decades, waging genocide against enemies of the state and attacking the Vietnamese government due to border disputes. In 1979, the Vietnamese government overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime, installing the People's Republic of Kampuchea as the new government. Cambodia would be occupied by Vietnamese troops into the 1990s, when 1991 peace accords held in Paris led to Cambodia's brief transition into a United Nations-governed mission. On 24 September 1993, the monarchy in Cambodia was restored, and Hun Sen and the centrist Cambodian People's Party established a new dictatorship that faced widespread poverty, corruption, lack of political freedom, low human development, environmental destruction, and a high rate of hunger. In July 2016, Cambodia had a population of 15,957,223 people, with the Khmer, Khmer Loeu, Vietnamese, Cham, and Lao being the major ethnic groups of the country.
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