The Leftist Issaraks
The other major Issarak grouping was started by two ex-monks, Achar Mean and Achar Sok, who went on to become better-known as Son Ngoc Minh and Tou Samouth respectively.
After an independence riot in Phnom Penh on 20 July 1942, Mean fled north to Kampong Chhnang where he decided to form an armed resistance band. Achar Sok, a professor of Pali at a monastery in Phnom Penh, also took part in the 1942 disturbances: after an incident in 1945 in which the monastery was struck by stray US Air Force bombs, he fled and eventually made his way to the Viet Minh. These two men were essentially the founders of communism in Cambodia; by the end of 1945 they were both working together with the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), in Vietnam, where the Viet Minh were leading the August Revolution after the Japanese capitulation. They obtained many new recruits amongst the Khmer Krom minority of southern Vietnam.
Read more about this topic: Khmer Issarak