If you are an older Cambodian then you have lived under a lot of different flags, and depending on which part of Cambodia you were living in, many these would have been Khmer Rouge flags.
Khmer Rouge flag
The Khmer Rouge to en extent never existed, what you had was the Communist Party of Kampuchea and its army. The Khmer Rouge was actually a nickname.
What does Khmer Rouge mean?
The Khmer are the people of Cambodia, Kampuchea being what Cambodians call their nation. Rouge means red, Khmer Rouge therefore means Red Khmer, or socialist Cambdoian. Ironically it was coined by King Sihanouk and was not meant to be a favorable term.
The party used a flag with a white background and a red hammer and sickle on the front. Not exactly a flag, but you could partly say it was the Khmer Rouge flag.
When the Khmer Rouge came to power on April 17th 1975 they began nation building, amongst other things. This involved such things as making a flag!
The flag of Democratic Kampuchea consisted of a golden Angkor Wat in the background and was adopted in January 6th 1976. It lasted just over 2 years….
The golden Angkor Wat sits upon a completely red background.
What did the flag of the Khmer Rouge signify?
Red represents revolution and the blood shed, whilst the three pillars on the Angkor Wat stand for the state of the people, workers and peasants.
It looked somewhat similar to the Vietnamese flag, but was unique amongst communist countries (cuba being a notable exception) in that it did not consist of any communist icons at all.
The Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, and the Khmer Rouge would continue to use this flag until they disbanded in 1998.