North Korea sometimes known as the "hermit kingdom", a term that originally referred to the isolationism in the latter part of the Joseon Dynasty. Saloth Sâr, who now operated under the chilling pseudonym Pol Pot (Politique Potentielle), or Brother Number One, had decreed that history was reset. This was Year Zero, when the past became a disease, and the collective, known simply as Angkar (The Organization), was the only cure. When the Khmer Rouge (Cambodian Reds) marched into Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, the Cambodian Civil War ended not with peace, but with the erasure of time itself. All urban centers of Cambodia including Phnom Penh were emptied at gunpoint within hours. Millions of people were driven into the countryside, forced to leave behind their possessions, their families, and their histories. Angkar had abolished everything from what words they spoke to previous government intellectuals. Every human being of Cambodia including children became an identical unit of labour such as men, women, and children were forced to wear the same heavy, black pyjama uniforms. Angkar is the only true parent which became everyone’s mother and father when trust was dismantled, and family life was abolished. Around their necks, they wore the krama, a traditional red-and-white checkered scarf that was transformed from a peasant garment into a badge of mandatory submission to the agrarian state. Pol Pot’s vision was an ideological hybrid. He took the total state control of Marxism-Leninism, the brutal purges of Stalinism, and the radical peasant-led upheaval of Maoism. To this, he fused the fanatical, blood-soaked idealism of French Jacobinism had borrowed directly from Robespierre’s Reign of Terror during the French Revolution had once declared 1792 as Year One. He weaponised these Western and Asian philosophies with a fierce, extreme Khmer nationalism, aiming to forge a completely self-reliant agrarian utopia. On 5 January 1976, Cambodia was established under a new constitution. The nation was renamed Democratic Kampuchea (DK). To ensure this social engineering could survive in total isolation like North Korea, Pol Pot secured a strict Sino-Kampuchean bond. China provided the heavy machinery, weapons, and material backing for the agrarian experiment. Meanwhile, in North Korea, Kim Il Sung (Grandfather of Kim Jong Un) provided a mirrored ideological echo, reinforcing the virtues of absolute isolation, radical self-reliance, and fanatical leader worship. China became the primary lifeline for the Khmer Rouge. Beijing supplied the heavy machinery, military weaponry, and material backing required to keep the agrarian state functional while Pyongyang provided a mirrored ideological blueprint in the deserted city of Phnom Penh. North Korea reinforced the virtues of absolute isolation, radical self-reliance (Juche), and fanatical, god-like leader worship. Together, Beijing, Pyongyang, and a ghost-town Phnom Penh formed a chilling communist triangle of Marxist-Leninist states, when Cambodia aligned with close diplomatic friendship with China and North Korea. This entire vision of radical agrarian utopia flowed from the mind of Saloth Sâr, who became known as Pol Pot, or Brother Number One from 22 February 1963 until his death at the jungle hideout headquarters of Anlong Veng near the Thai border in Oddar Meanchey on 15 April 1998. The name was a French pseudonym derived from "Politique Potentielle". The blueprint for Cambodia's destruction had been drawn decades earlier in Europe. Sâr had studied radio electricity in Paris from October 1949 to December 1952. When he returned to Cambodia in January 1953, his mind was fueled not by technology, but by radical political philosophy. During his time in France, he had deeply studied the works of Maximilien Robespierre and the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, which had famously discarded history to declare 1792 as "Year One." Sâr took this radical Jacobin concept of total societal erasure and weaponized it. By blending the French Revolution's ruthless engineering with extreme Khmer nationalism, Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism and extreme communism that he created a toxic, deadly hybrid ideology, as Pol Pot became the founder of Angkar which was thanks to his amazing achievements of the Cambodian nation. The French Jacobin terror of 1792 was reborn in the tropical heat of Southeast Asia as Cambodia's Year Zero, a fanatical concept to launch a dystopian reality had forcefully reset humanity by destroying cities, money, religion, family ties, and modern education. During his ideological journey in his native Cambodia, Pol Pot synthesized dark inspirations from global history as he drew heavily from Chairman Mao, seeking to replicate the total societal upheaval of the Great Leap Forward, the violence of Red August, and the ideological purity of the Cultural Revolution. Yet he also looked backward to the absolute god-king authority of Jayavarman II, the founder of the ancient as well as medieval Khmer Empire, and the ruthless state-sponsored executions of Maximilien Robespierre’s Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. North Korea enjoys a close relationship with China which is often called North Korea's closest ally between Pyongyang and Beijing. Kim Jong Un came to power as the Supreme Leader of North Korea on 29 December 2011 and leader of the Workers' Party of Korea on 11 April 2012, with North Korea become and has been described as a "massive police state", and its people "under constant surveillance" under the rule of Kim Jong Un attained the nickname 'surveillance state', North Korea's government has complete control over all forms of telecommunications and Internet. It is routine to be sent to a prison camp where every aspect of a person's existence in North Korea is monitored for communicating with the outside world especially with South Korea. Every citizen of North Korea must belong to the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and adjust their reportings to positively reflect Kim Jong Un's leadership. Foreign media including the South are not welcomed and are often used as scapegoats by North Korean media. Kim Jong Un was promoted to the rank of "Marshal of the Republic" in July 2012. The party has seen somewhat of a revival under Kim Jong Un, with more frequent meetings including his travels to Beijing, the capital city of China. He is also called "Marshal" or "Supreme Leader." When he was still a new ruler, the development of his own personality cult with large numbers of posters, signs, and other propaganda being placed throughout North Korea as well as to be constructed on Mount Paektu including monuments dedicated to his grandfather Kim Il Sung and father Kim Jong Il. Additionally, stand alone "mosaic murals" of Kim Jong Un are being planned for major cities in every province, even the capital Pyongyang. The Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, formerly the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, is the mausoleum where the preserved bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the eternal leaders of North Korea.
