Cambodia earned US$1.3 billion last year, 80 percent of all export revenues, supplying such clothing giants as The Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Columbia Sportswear. The US is the biggest customer.
Factories run largely by Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong investors employ more than 200,000 people, mostly women. They earn a minimum of US$45 a month -- up to US$70 with overtime -- a princely sum in a country where a schoolteacher earns about US$25 a month.
Once a buffer between Thai and Vietnamese empires, Cambodia became a hapless victim of the Vietnam War.
From 1969 to 1973, the US dropped hundreds of thousands of tonnes of bombs on eastern Cambodia trying to cut communist North Vietnam's supply lines to its troops. About 250,000 Cambodians are believed to have been killed.
As the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Cambodia faced another catastrophe -- the fanatically leftist Khmer Rouge, bent on transforming the country into an agrarian utopia. More than 1.7 million Cambodians died of disease, starvation, executions and overwork.
That was when independence lost all significance for Cambodians, said Vann Nath, 58, who survived the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 torture prison and lost three sons to the regime.
"Whenever I remember it, it's the scariest nightmare for me," he said.
The Khmer Rouge was toppled in 1979 by the Vietnamese army, which installed Khmer Rouge deserters, including Hun Sen, in power.
In 1993, with the Cold War over, Cambodia had its first multiparty election in 23 years. Hun Sen's party lost the UN-supervised vote but he managed to end up sharing power with Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the king's son. Hun Sen seized full power by ousting the prince in a coup in 1997.
He has since ruled with a firm grip, backed by the police and military forces behind his coup.
Although credited with restoring stability to Cambodia, Hun Sen has been accused of dragging his feet on setting up a UN-backed genocide tribunal to bring surviving Khmer Rouge leaders to justice. None has ever faced a court.
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