Until the age of five, Loung Ung and her family led a happy and relatively carefree life in Cambodia's capital Phnom Pen. Ung's father was a high ranking government official and Ing was one of the family's seven children, enjoying the open-air markets in the city, eating fried crickets, watching chickens fight and mildly disobeying her parents. After the Khmer Rouge took over, peiole were systematically killed, tortured, maimed, and jailed.